Pharma Marketing Practices Committee: UCPMP 2024 Review

🗞️ Why in News The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP), Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, has constituted a three-member committee chaired by Dr. M. Srinivas, Member, NITI Aayog, to examine the regulatory framework governing pharmaceutical marketing practices and recommend measures to curb unethical practices. The order is dated 22 October 2026; PIB announced it on 23 October 2026.

The committee’s brief is wide. It is to examine “the existing regulatory framework governing pharmaceutical marketing practices” and “recommend measures to strengthen oversight, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms to curb unethical practices in the pharmaceutical sector”. One of its terms of reference asks it to consider “regulatory/statutory” measures, which puts a basic question on the table: should the rules for companies stay a code, or become law?

At a Glance: The Committee

The deadline runs from the committee’s first meeting, so the order itself fixes no end date.

Terms of Reference: What the Committee Must Examine

The order and the PIB release list five terms of reference:

• (a) “To undertake a holistic and comprehensive examination of all issues relating to unethical pharmaceutical marketing practices.”
• (b) “To examine the efficacy of the existing mechanisms for monitoring, oversight and enforcement with respect to unethical pharma marketing practices, and to identify measures required to ensure greater transparency, accountability and effective compliance.”
• (c) “To examine the need for measures required to strengthen the existing monitoring and regulatory framework and to suggest appropriate regulatory/statutory or any other measures and legal framework for implementation of such measures as necessary.”
• (d) “To discuss with concerned stakeholders, technical, professional and domain experts, institutions or bodies, as considered necessary and consider their submissions objectively while submitting its recommendations on the matter after a comprehensive examination.”
• (e) “To deliberate and recommend on any other relevant issue in connection with curbing unethical pharma marketing practices.”

Terms (b) and (c) carry the weight. The first asks whether the present machinery works; the second allows the committee to suggest statutory measures if it finds that it does not.

How Pharma Marketing Is Policed Now

The UCPMP 2024: what it bars

The DoP issued the UCPMP 2024 to all pharmaceutical associations in March 2024, asking that it be circulated “to all members for strict compliance”. Section 8 of the Code sets the core limits on companies:

• Gifts (8.1): “No gift should be offered or provided for personal benefit of any healthcare professional or family member”.
• Travel (8.2) and hospitality (8.3): no travel facility or hospitality, such as hotel stays, for healthcare professionals, except when the professional is a speaker at a continuing medical education (CME) or continuing professional development (CPD) programme.
• Cash (8.4): no cash or monetary grant to any healthcare professional or their family members, under any pretext.

The Code applies, mutatis mutandis, to medical devices as well, unless exempted or to the extent modified by standing orders.

How the Code is enforced

• Ethics Committee (ECPMP): each association sets up an Ethics Committee for Pharma Marketing Practices, chaired by its Chief Executive Officer, with three to five members. It should decide a complaint within 90 days; if no appeal is filed, its decision is final and binding, and adherence is a condition of continued membership of the association.
• Penalties: once a breach is established, the Committee can propose suspending or expelling the company from the association, a published reprimand, a corrective statement, or recovery of the money or items given. Where disciplinary, penal or remedial action lies with a government agency under a statute, it may send its recommendations to that agency “through the Department of Pharmaceuticals”.
• Appeal (ACPMP): appeals go to the Apex Committee for Pharma Marketing Practices, headed by the Secretary, DoP, with a Joint Secretary and a Finance Officer. It is to decide within six months, and its decision is “final and binding on both the parties”.
• Company responsibility: a company’s Chief Executive Officer is responsible for compliance and files a self-declaration within two months of the end of each financial year.

The 2015 code it superseded

The PIB release sets out the history: “The Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) was introduced in 2015 as a voluntary, industry-led self-regulatory mechanism to promote ethical pharmaceutical marketing and regulate interactions between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals. The Department subsequently introduced UCPMP 2024, which superseded the 2015 version and strengthened the implementation framework. The 2024 Code is currently in operation.” The order adds that the 2015 code was meant to ensure that promotion of drugs “is accurate, balanced and evidence-based, and that prescribing and treatment decisions are not improperly influenced by gifts, financial inducements or other benefits.”

The Doctors’ Side: The Medical-Ethics Rules

• Clause 6.8, IMC Regulations 2002. Under the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002, “A medical practitioner shall not receive any gift from any pharmaceutical or allied health care industry and their sales people or representatives.” The clause also covers travel, hospitality and cash or monetary grants. It was included by a notification published on 14 December 2009.
• The NMC’s 2023 regulations, held in abeyance. The NMC’s Registered Medical Practitioner (Professional Conduct) Regulations, 2023, dated 2 August 2023, also barred practitioners and their families from receiving gifts, travel, hospitality, cash, consultancy fees or honorariums from pharmaceutical companies. A gazette notification of 23 August 2023 (published on 24 August 2023) held them “in abeyance with immediate effect”; they “shall not be operative and effective till further Gazette Notification on the subject by the National Medical Commission”. The same notification adopted and made effective the 2002 Regulations, as if the Commission had made them under the National Medical Commission Act, 2019.
• The Supreme Court on freebies. In Apex Laboratories v. DCIT (22 February 2022), a case on whether a company could deduct the cost of freebies to doctors for income tax, the Supreme Court observed that medical practitioners have “a quasi-fiduciary relationship with their patients”, and that “the cost of supplying such freebies is usually factored into the drug, driving prices up”. It dismissed the company’s appeal.

Background: The Supreme Court Proceedings

On 8 October 2026, a bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta “directed the Union of India to constitute a committee to recommend statutory regulations to curb unethical marketing practices by pharmaceutical companies”, LiveLaw reported. The DoP’s order is dated 22 October 2026. For background on the hearing, see our roundup of 9 October.

Mains Lens: Code or Law?

• The enforcement gap. The UCPMP is enforced by the industry’s own associations, and the penalties it lists act on membership: suspension, expulsion, reprimand. Action under a statute needs a reference, through the Department, to a government agency. Before the Supreme Court, petitioners’ counsel Sanjay Parikh argued that the regime penalises doctors who accept freebies but has no statutory mechanism to penalise companies that offer them, LiveLaw reported.
• Norms are not enough. LiveLaw reported the bench as observing that “the efficacy of the regulatory framework cannot be assessed merely by the existence of prescribed norms; it must also be judged by their efficacy, implementation and enforcement”. Term of reference (b) asks the committee to test exactly that.
• The patient pays. If, as the Supreme Court observed in Apex Laboratories, the cost of freebies is factored into the price of the drug, unethical marketing is also a question of affordability of medicines.
• Ethics (GS4). A doctor in a quasi-fiduciary relationship who accepts an inducement faces a conflict of interest between the company’s interest and the patient’s. Rules that bar the inducement on both sides are meant to remove the conflict at its source.
• Code or statute. Term of reference (c) lets the committee suggest “regulatory/statutory or any other measures and legal framework”. A statute would bring binding duties and penalties for companies; a stronger code would keep self-regulation with more oversight. Its recommendations go to the DoP, which decides what to do with them.

Way forward (for answer writing): duties on companies that match those on doctors; oversight of complaints that does not rest on industry bodies alone; public reporting of decisions and penalties; the same rules for medical devices; and time-bound action on references to government agencies.

What to Watch Next

• The date of the committee’s first meeting, which starts its two-month clock.
• Its consultations with stakeholders and experts, its recommendations to the DoP, and the Department’s decision on them.

UPSC Relevance

GS Paper 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health; Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors.

GS Paper 4: Ethical concerns and dilemmas in government and private institutions; conflict of interest.

Prelims: the committee’s chair and members; the DoP under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers; UCPMP 2015 and UCPMP 2024; the ECPMP and the ACPMP; clause 6.8 of the IMC Regulations, 2002; the NMC’s 2023 regulations held in abeyance.

Mains: “The rules that bar doctors from accepting gifts from drug companies are binding regulations, while the rules for the companies sit in a code. Examine the case for statutory regulation of pharmaceutical marketing practices in India.” (GS2, 250 words)

📌 Facts Corner, Knowledgepedia

Prelims, statement-ready facts:

• Committee on pharmaceutical marketing practices: constituted by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers
• Order F.No. 31026/22/2022-Policy, dated 22 October 2026; announced by PIB on 23 October 2026
• Chair: Dr. M. Srinivas, Member, NITI Aayog; members: Smt. Preeti Sudan and Dr. Naresh Trehan
• Deadline: recommendations to the DoP within two months from the date of its first meeting
• UCPMP: introduced in 2015 as a voluntary, industry-led self-regulatory mechanism; superseded by UCPMP 2024
• UCPMP 2024 (March 2024) bars gifts and cash grants to healthcare professionals and their families, and travel and hospitality except for CME or CPD speakers
• ECPMP: each association’s Ethics Committee for Pharma Marketing Practices, chaired by the association’s CEO
• ACPMP: the Apex Committee for Pharma Marketing Practices, headed by the Secretary, DoP, hears appeals
• Doctors: clause 6.8 of the IMC (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 bars gifts from the pharma industry

Prelims, the traps:

• The UCPMP is a code that the Department itself calls voluntary; it is not an Act of Parliament
• The NMC’s 2023 conduct regulations were held in abeyance on 23 August 2023; the IMC 2002 regulations were made effective again
• The two-month deadline runs from the committee’s first meeting, not from the order of 22 October 2026
• The UCPMP 2024 applies, mutatis mutandis, to medical devices as well (unless exempted or modified by standing orders), not only to drugs

Mains, arguments and keywords:

• Asymmetry: doctors are bound by ethics regulations; companies face association-level penalties under a code
• Apex Laboratories (2022): freebies’ cost is usually factored into the drug; doctors stand in a quasi-fiduciary relationship with patients
• Keywords: self-regulation, statutory backing, conflict of interest, quasi-fiduciary duty, enforcement gap, transparency

Interview, be ready for:

• “Should the UCPMP be made law?” Weigh deterrence and enforceability against compliance burden; note that term of reference (c) allows statutory measures.

Sources: PIB, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, “Department of Pharmaceuticals Constitutes Committee to Review Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices”, 23 October 2026, and the Department of Pharmaceuticals order F.No. 31026/22/2022-Policy, 22 October 2026. Department of Pharmaceuticals, Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices 2024 (March 2024). Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 (NMC copy, amended up to October 2016). National Medical Commission Registered Medical Practitioner (Professional Conduct) Regulations, 2023, and the Gazette of India notification of August 2023 holding them in abeyance. Supreme Court of India, Apex Laboratories v. DCIT (2022). LiveLaw, report on the Supreme Court’s order on pharmaceutical marketing practices, October 2026.

Cite this page: Pharma Marketing Practices Committee: UCPMP 2024 Review — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Current Affairs