The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday asked the government to file its response to a PIL alleging that the prices of essential and non-essential drugs would further increase under the new drug price fixing policy.

The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice G. S. Singhvi observed that under the new drug price fixing policy drug manufacturers' margins have jumped in the range of 10 per cent to whopping 1,300 per cent.

The petition was filed by All India Drug Action Network, which wants the apex court to overturn the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2012 (NPPP 2012) as notified on 7th of December last year.

The petition sought the apex court to order the government to keep on using cost based method to fix ceiling prices of all essential drugs as per DPCO 1995. In other words, the petitioner sought the court to direct the government to make drug makers to reflect the increase of prices of raw materials in the actual increase of prices of drugs.

The All India Drug Action Network also argued that the government included only 348 drugs in the National List of Essential Drugs, letting a number of other essential medicines to remain out of the reach of price control.

The Supreme Court also pulled the government for dilly-dallying on the matter of drug price fixation for the last ten years.