New Delhi sources stated that Supreme Court lifted a ban on the manufacture and sale of Piramal's painkiller Saridon and two other drugs Piriton and Dart for now. Accordingly these drugs were part of the 328 Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) drugs whose manufacture, distribution and sale were banned by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on September 12.
Meanwhile when lifting the ban till the case was disposed, a bench of Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman and Justice Indu Malhotra sought the Centre's response to the pleas by affected pharmaceutical companies against the order to ban FDCs manufactured before 1988. Presently the bench is hearing cases on the validity of fixed dose drug licenses and moreover questioning the ban, the companies had earlier said that the only reason given in the government's notification was that the combinations had "no therapeutic value".
Furthermore the Centre's decision to ban 328 FDC drugs had brought around
6,000 medicines on the radar, including very commonly used ones. Reports added
the list of such drugs includes Piramal's painkiller Saridon, Macleods Pharma's
Panderm Plus skin cream, Alkem Laboratories' antibacterial Taxim AZ and
combination diabetes drug Gluconorm PG. Moreover the ban order was, however,
hailed by the All India Drug Action Network, which said that the government had
taken the right decision as "banned drugs were indeed harmful and not
prescribed in medicine textbooks".