Many bills related to health, pharma will go into oblivion with final session of current House

In view of the elections scheduled in April-May this year and several pressing issues before the government, the fate of several pending bills related to health, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors are unlikely to get any consideration in the budget session of the House, thus sealing the fate of several crucial legislations in the pipeline. The main business during session of the Parliament, beginning from February 5 and scheduled till February 21, will be to present and pass the vote-on-account and railways vote-on-account, ahead of the elections to complete the Constitutional obligation. The session is in fact will be an extended Winter session as both Houses were not prorogued. In view of the elections, the present government may also press a few other bills which can gain the fancy of the masses. This will mean that several bills pending for years would be pushed into the cold storage as the revival of the same would depend fully on the preferences and policies of the next government. Some of these bills after prolonged wait were even introduced in the House. One of the main bills, which was in fact almost through, is the Central Drugs Authority Bill which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in August last year and then was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee.  The panel, which submitted its report in December, has virtually turned down most of the main proposals, putting the government in a spot to redraft the bill. Revising the now-defunct bill of 2007, the new bill seeks to centralise licensing in 17 categories of very critical drugs included in the proposed Third Schedule of the Act. A separate Chapter containing regulatory provisions for medical devices and more comprehensive provisions for regulating clinical trials and exports are included in the bill. Another bill, after long wait, that came upto the Parliament was the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill. But the term for examining the bill has been extended upto March 2014, thus making it impossible for the current session to take it up and pass the bill. One important bill that will also go into the cold storage will be the HIV/AIDS bill, which has been pending since 2006. The HIV/AIDS (Prevention & Control) Bill 2013 is still to be vetted by the Ministry of Law and Justice. No time frame has been kept for its introduction yet.

Source:Pharmabiz