Chandigarh: A major medicine crisis hit Punjab and Chandigarh on Wednesday as retail and wholesale medical stores observed a 24-hour complete shutdown. The strike, orchestrated by the Punjab Chemists Association in alignment with a nationwide call by the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists, began at midnight on Tuesday and is scheduled to continue until midnight on Wednesday, May 20. The mass protest has left thousands of patients and their attendants scrambling for essential drugs and life-saving prescriptions.
The real-world impact of the strike became visible early Tuesday morning across major urban pockets. At the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, a family travelling all the way from Kashmir for specialized treatment was left stranded outside a closed commercial medical store, waiting for hours in hopes of securing prescribed medicines. Wholesale and retail pharmaceutical hubs in Amritsar and Ludhiana remained completely locked down, with anxious buyers gathered outside shuttered gates. The impact was partial in Jalandhar, where wholesale markets remained open while retail pharmacies closed doors. In Pathankot, private medical counters were entirely shut down, forcing families to rely on government-run setups like the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Kendras and local civil hospital dispensaries, which remained open alongside essential internal hospital pharmacies in Mohali and Faridkot.
The agitation stems from deep-rooted grievances among brick-and-mortar operators against corporate-backed digital e-pharmacy platforms. The Punjab Chemists Association, representing nearly 24,000 licensed stores in Punjab and over 1,000 in Chandigarh, stated that online delivery firms are exploiting regulatory loopholes to engage in predatory pricing. Association President Surinder Duggal warned that the body would escalate the stir and surrender shop keys to the state government if their administrative demands remained unaddressed.
The chemist bodies have formally raised a four-point charter of demands targeting current online drug distribution frameworks:
The unchecked expansion of unregulated online medicine platforms is severely impacting small, neighborhood mom-and-pop pharmacies while posing significant public health risks due to weak monitoring.
Protesters are demanding the immediate withdrawal or modification of central notifications GSR 220(E) and GSR 817(E). The association claims these specific clauses contain legal ambiguities that corporate e-pharmacies exploit to run digital delivery networks without fulfilling physical verification norms.
The current online setup creates high risks for the digital upload of counterfeit, altered, or expired medical prescriptions, creating an open channel for the unchecked sale of antibiotics, habit-forming drugs, and restricted formulations. Chemists are demanding a strict, modernized legal framework for digital drug sales.
Local retail shops cannot match the deep capital-backed discounts ranging from 20% to 50% offered by online aggregators. Protesting bodies argue that price controls must be revised under the Drug Price Control Order to ensure fair retail competition and protect the livelihoods of millions of brick-and-mortar pharmaceutical employees.
