Patents bill gets Left push, Pension waits

The bill on Patents, meanwhile, was passed today after a five-hour discussion. Realising it was a touchy subject, Kamal Nath assured the House that the interests of the Indian pharma industry had been protected and people would continue to have access to inexpensive medicine.

To accommodate the concerns of different sections, the Minister carried out 15 official amendments to the bill. Interestingly, the NDA which had fathered the bill when it was in power and then introduced it in December, 2003, staged a walkout. The NDA was upset that the bill was not being referred to a parliamentary standing committee.

An element of compromise was, however, obvious. Giving in to demands from the Left, Kamal Nath agreed to refer to an expert committee two of the amendments pertaining to whether ‘‘new chemical entities’’ or just ‘‘new entities’’ would be covered under product patents and whether micro organisms and seeds would be covered by patents.

The bill provides for product patents in drugs, agri-products and embedded software. All plants have been kept out of the purview of the legislation.

There was much political posturing on both sides while the bill was being debated. Rejecting NDA’s demand to refer the bill to a standing committee, Kamal Nath said the a Joint Parliamentary Committee had already deliberated the second amendment to the Bill for two years over 40 sittings. The Bill had been in public domain for two years and ‘‘now there is no need to refer it to the standing committee again,’’ he said.

He added that the Indian pharma industry has benefited from the TRIPs agreement as exports which were at negligible levels in 1995 had gone up to Rs 16,000 crore now. Nath said there were now 64 US FDA-approved pharma manufacturers in India, the largest outside the US, which were supplying drugs to the US and the European Union.