Move to weed out fake pharmacists by State Drug Control Administration

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The State Drug Control Administration has initiated verification to ascertain if any pharmacists whose registrations have been cancelled under Section 32 (B) of the Pharmacy Act, 1948 are working in any of the current retail pharmacies across the State.

The Assam Pharmacy Council (APC) had cancelled the registration of 1,810 pharmacists in two phases – 1,374 pharmacists on February 21, 2020; and 437 on May 6, 2020. Accordingly, two separate gazette notifications regarding the cancellation of pharmacists' registrations were issued on September 11, 2020.

On September 18, 2020, the APC wrote a letter to the 'State Drug Control Administration' to close the pharmacies that are being run with the registration of pharmacists whose names have figured in the cancellation list.

Talking to The Sentinel, State Deputy Drug Controller HridayanandaMahanta said, "After receiving the letter from the APC with the gazette notifications affixed, we've started to act on that. On September 30, 2020, I ordered the senior drug inspectors and drug inspectors of various districts in the State to verify if any of the pharmacists whose names figured in the cancellation list is working in any of the retail pharmacies within their jurisdiction.

"If any such pharmacists are found working in any retail pharmacies, we're going to ask the pharmacies concerned to appoint eligible pharmacists within seven days. If they don't, we'll have to close down such pharmacies after issuing the show-cause notices. The verification of fake pharmacists has been already initiated in Golaghat and Dibrugarh districts. Such verification is to follow in other districts as well."

This has been a long-drawn-out issue. Under the 'Pharmacy Act-1948', registration of pharmacists is done in two ways in Assam. The pharmacists registered under Section 32(B) of the Act in the State were originally registered in other States from where they shifted to Assam through re-registration. The pharmacists registered under Section 32 (2) of the Act, on the contrary, have their direct registration in Assam.

The State government had received an allegation in 2008 that most of the pharmacists registered under Section 32(B) of the Act were fake ones, and that led the government to form a scanning committee to ascertain the veracity of the allegation. The scanning committee found the allegation to be true; and recommended the APC to cancel the registrations of the fake pharmacists. That development led many of the pharmacists and some of their organizations registered under Section 32(B) of the Act to move the Gauhati High Court in 2011. The High Court clubbed all the cases and issued an order on May 31, 2018 asking all the pharmacists having their registration under Section 32(B) of the Act to submit their documents to the APC for verification. However, only 14 pharmacists complied with the HC order.

Following subsequent orders from the High Court, only 1,021 pharmacists submitted their documents to the APC for verification. On its part, the APC formed an expert committee for the verification of those documents. Interestingly enough, the expert committee found all the documents to be fake. The APC then issued show-cause notices to all the 3,174 pharmacists registered under Section 32 (B) of the Act. However, many of the pharmacists did not reply to the show-cause notices, and that led the APC to cancel the registration of 1,810 pharmacists.

There are 16,497 registered pharmacists in Assam.

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