STATE ASKED TO REGISTER PHARMACISTS

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has directed the state government that it should complete an exercise of registering all pharmacists in whose names retail medical shops had been registered within three months.

Thereafter, state shall ensure whether there is any duplicacy or fictitious or unauthorised persons are running retail medical shops or not and appropriate action shall be taken within one month, the court further directed.

This order was passed on Tuesday by a division bench of justice Sudhir Agarwal and justice Virendra Kumar - ll on a PIL filed by Asha Mishra and others. The petitioners alleged that registered pharmacists were very few while registered medical retail shops were in large numbers.

They submitted that as per legal provisions, it is mandatory that every retail shop must have a registered pharmacist who should remain present during working time of shop, but that was not actually happening.

The petitioners alleged that large number of either fictitious, unqualified persons or one person using his registration certificate in several shops, were looking after such shops and state had not taken any preventive steps.

A counter-affidavit (reply) was filed on behalf of respondents including state government stating that a meeting was held on March 22 this year and it was decided to prepare a data base of registered pharmacists and thereafter to proceed in the matter. However, what had been done further was not clear, the court said.

The court further directed that the secretary, medical, health and family welfare, UP shall issue necessary instructions to all drug inspectors /drug licencing authorities concerned across the state to bring this requirement to the notice of all retail drug dealers and registered pharmacists concerned for compliance of aforesaid direction. The court listed the matter after four months.