-The Hindu Bayer's plea dismissed by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board The Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on Monday upheld the grant of compulsory licence (CL) to the Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma Limited, a generic drug maker, to produce and market Nexavar, a patented cancer drug of multinational pharma major Bayer Corporation. The order will pave the way for reduction in the prices of costly life saving drugs. Disposing an appeal filed by Bayer...

-Live Mint An investigation found DCGI cleared drugs without conducting mandatory clinical trials After five rounds of consultations in six months, a committee tasked with making recommendations on cleaning up India’s drugs-approval process and ending the cosy relationship between doctors, pharmaceutical companies and government officials had no suggestions to offer by way of a crackdown. It has, instead, suggested setting up 20 sub-committees. The report submitted to the health ministry in November is...

-The Indian Express But for their status of being sitting MLAs, former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay could have been staring at the end of their political careers after being sentenced for 10 years in a corruption case. Instead, father and son remain legislators after they moved the Delhi High Court, thanks to the existing provisions of 1951’s Representation of the People (RP) Act. For a convicted...

-The Hindu While the people of Jammu & Kashmir have a deep-rooted mistrust of state institutions, there are also substantive and unacceptable provisions in the proposed legislation While much of the country is focused on the budget and its implications for the economy and individual pocketbooks, Kashmir is focused, with much trepidation, on a draft police reform bill. This in itself gives one a sense of the disconnect that exists between Kashmir...

-The Hindu Jammu: Responding to the public pressure, an Army court on Saturday decided to shift its centre of recording the statements of witnesses in the Pathribal carnage from Nagrota in Jammu to Awantipore in Kashmir valley. The court is holding trial on a chargesheet as the CBI has held a group of the Army officials guilty of killing five civilians in a fake encounter in Anantnag district in March 2000. Even...