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Not stopping Jan Aushadhi Kendras outside hospital premises, Karnataka Govt informs high court

The Karnataka Government has filed an appeal against a high court order which quashed the government order directing the closure of Jan Aushadhi Kendras outside government hospital premises.

3 min readBengaluruJan 29, 2026 05:47 PM IST

The Karnataka High Court quashed the government order directing the closure of Jan Aushadhi Kendras outside government hospital premises. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Karnataka Government Thursday informed the Karnataka High Court that it is not stopping the continuation of Jan Aushadhi Kendras (JAKs) outside the premises of government hospitals and that the discontinuation of the licensor and licensee agreement between the petitioners and the government has been made to be shown as a policy decision of the government.

The state government has filed an appeal challenging a single-judge order which quashed the government order dated May 14, 2025. The government order had directed the closure of JAKs under the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana scheme in government hospitals, on the grounds that the state was providing free medicine to patients.

Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty informed the court that there are around 1,200 JAKs outside the government hospital premises, which are not being disturbed. Inside the hospitals, there are around 187 kendras out of which 61 were run by the government, and on its own, the state has shifted them outside the hospitals. The remaining 126 shop licence owners moved the court challenging the order directing them to vacate the government premises.

A division bench of Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice C M Poonacha, on briefly hearing the submission of the state government issued notice to the respondents—shop owner Pradeep T and the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Bureau of India, and directed the appeal to be posted for a hearing on April 2.

On the submission of the Advocate General that similar appeals were filed before the coordinate bench of Dharwad and Kalaburagi challenging the single-judge orders, Chief Justice Bakhru directed that the matters be placed before the court on the administrative side for being consolidated and posted for hearing before one bench.

‘Yet another slogan of providing a freebie’

A single-judge order dated December 19 allowed a batch of petitions and quashed the government order dated May 14, 2025. The
decision followed an order passed on December 10, 2025, by a coordinate bench in Dharwad, which quashed the government order on similar petitions filed before it. MP Tejasvi Surya’s legal team represented the shop licence owners before the court.

In its order, the Dharwad bench had strongly criticised the government move. It said, “The sole reason to close the Kendra/s and direct eviction of these petitioners from the premises is that the State wants to deliver free medicine – yet another slogan of providing a freebie or outside medicine is not allowed inside the hospital.”

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Karnataka Health and Family Welfare Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao, in the Legislative Council, while replying during the Zero hour, had said that the government would challenge the high court order. He had said, “Our intention was only to ensure that the government hospitals provide free medicines and treatment. There is nothing political in this.”