Chhattisgarh HC quashes 5 year ban on opening of new Pharmacy Colleges India
The Chhattisgarh High Court has quashed the five year ban imposed by the Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) and Government of India (GOI) on the opening of new Pharmacy Colleges in India.
While hearing a petition by a batch of colleges, Chhattisgarh High Court has quashed the five year ban imposed by Government of India (GOI) and Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) on the opening of new Pharmacy Colleges in India for the next 5 years.
Single Bench of Justice P Sam Koshy termed the ban in question as unconstitutional, monopolistic and discriminatory in nature, as reported by Live Law.
Why opening of new Pharmacy Colleges in India was banned?
After approval from GOI, PCI in the year 2020 had imposed a blanket moratorium order on the opening of new Pharmacy colleges across the country for next 5 years. The ban was imposed to stop the mushrooming pharmacy colleges with compromised quality. However, later on the 5-year ban order was challenged by the colleges.
The court said, "The parent act of the Pharmacy Act 1948 doesn't contain any substantive provision empowering the PCI to impose a ban or a moratorium of the kind imposed by it. The PCI as a delegatee of the Statute has to act within the four corners of the parent enactment and that it has acted ultra-vires the same whilst imposing the said ban."
"The ban must be treated as a 'prohibitory order', and not a mere 'regulatory order' since it seeks to suspend the opening of new institutions for a long period of 5-yrs that too only for specific category of colleges, viz. the new colleges whilst leaving the existing colleges untouched. The Court in this regard distinguished between the 'power to regulate' and the 'power to prohibit' conferred by the parent enactment and when the Court can treat a 'power to regulate', as not including the 'power to prohibit'.The ban had been imposed by way of executive instructions, without any specific conferment by the parent act. Thus the Fundamental Right to open and run educational institutions stands through these executive instructions," added the court.
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