RailEnquiry

Former City MP and All-India in charge of the legal and legislative cell of the BJP, Satya Pal Jain, today alleged that Union Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal son’s Himachal Pradesh-based pharmaceutical unit manufactured sub-standard medicines.In a press conference, Jain showed documents of the Standing Committee of Parliament on Health and Family Welfare, which stated that 13 drugs, including one manufactured at Theon Pharmaceutical Limited at Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh, owned by Bansal’s son, did not have permission to sell medicines in many developed countries.The Standing Committee of Parliament observed, a total of 31 new drugs were approved in the period January 2008 to October 2010, without conducting clinical trials on Indian patients.Jain also showed list of drugs reported to be of sub-standard quality by the Drugs Control Laboratory, Maharashtra, in February 2011, June 2011, December 2011 and May 2012, which included medicines manufactured by Theon Pharmaceutical Limited.

Giving example, Jain said that a medicine ‘Valuementin dry syrup’ when checked by the authorities, found that the content of clavulanic acid in the sample (when stored) was less (54.11 per cent of the labeled amount) than the Indian Pharmacopoeia 2007 limits as given in the protocol.

In the report, it was also mentioned that in the Merycef-C dry syrup manufactured at Theon Pharmaceutical, the content of clavulanic acid in the sample wass less (13.9 per cent of the labelled amount) than the permissible limits.