The Centre has been ordered to convene an expert committee after the court questioned whether India’s rules can effectively punish drug companies for influencing doctors’ prescriptions.
India’s Supreme Court has pressed the Union government to build a tougher legal structure to curb unethical pharmaceutical marketing, reviving scrutiny of freebies, inducements and other payments that can influence doctors’ prescriptions. The case, which has been running since 2021, centres on a problem that critics say has long been baked into the system: companies can be told what they should not do, but enforcement has often been too weak to make those rules bite.
According to India Today, the court last week ordered the Centre to set up an expert committee within two weeks to examine the right regulatory or statutory framework for policing such conduct. The panel must consult the petitioners, intervenors and other stakeholders, then submit recommendations within two months of its first meeting. The government will then have to consider the findings and report back to the court. The move marks a notable shift, because the Centre had previously argued that existing laws were sufficient, before acknowledging in an affidavit this year that the framework governing pharmaceutical companies needed strengthening.
The petition was brought by the Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives’ Associations of India, which has argued that self-regulation cannot work when drugmakers have a financial interest in encouraging prescriptions for their own products. Partha Rakshit, the group’s secretary general, told India Today that the government had finally admitted the current provisions were not strong enough to deter companies from bribing doctors or shaping medicine choices. He also said the arrangement had been sustained by the interests of both industry and the state. Dr Abhay Shukla, a doctor-activist and senior member of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, said inducements had not disappeared so much as changed form, with intermediary agencies now sometimes used to pass on benefits.
The dispute is rooted in the Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices, or UCPMP, which is designed to stop commercial promotion from distorting clinical judgement, encouraging irrational prescribing or steering patients towards more expensive brands. The code covers gifts, travel, hospitality, sponsorships, samples and other promotional materials. Until 2024, it was largely voluntary and relied on companies and industry bodies to police themselves, a structure critics said lacked meaningful penalties and gave the industry too much room to mark its own homework.
That changed in March 2024, when the Department of Pharmaceuticals notified a revised UCPMP after recommendations from a panel led by former NITI Aayog member for health, V.K. Paul. The updated code says it is mandatory and introduces ethics officers inside companies, ethics committees within pharmaceutical associations, a complaint and appeal process, disclosure of marketing spending and more detailed limits on promotional activities. It also extends to medical devices. But, as the court proceedings have underlined, the existence of a code on paper is not the same as a statute with clear investigative and punitive powers. The government has now been asked to examine whether a dedicated law, amendments to existing legislation or another enforceable mechanism is needed. India Today reported that the Centre’s earlier attempts to fit the issue within the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, and the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, ran into limits because neither offers a comprehensive answer to the full range of dealings between drug companies and doctors.
Industry groups have so far publicly backed the revised code. The Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India says it has adopted and implemented the 2024 framework, while the Department of Pharmaceuticals has said the system is intended to promote transparency and accountability in marketing practices. Even so, the Supreme Court’s intervention suggests that, after years of debate, the larger question is no longer whether unethical promotion exists, but whether India has the legal machinery to punish it effectively.
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