Supreme Court wants cap on trade margin for all essential medicines and medical products
The Supreme Court of India questioned the government on why trade margin caps for essential medicines are limited to cancer drugs. The court expressed concern over extreme price markups in the pharmaceutical industry and urged for broader price regulation.
Why it matters
This legal intervention could lead to significant changes in pharmaceutical pricing policies, potentially lowering costs for patients across various medical categories.
Even as the Centre informed the Supreme Court on Monday (October 12, 2026) that it had decided to cap trade margins at 30% for non-scheduled cancer drugs, the court questioned why the benefit of such price regulation should be confined to cancer drugs and not extended to other essential medicines and medical products.
The development comes after a Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta expressed concern over stark disparities between the price to retailer (PTR) and the maximum retail price (MRP) of certain medicines, particularly cancer drugs, with mark-ups in some instances soaring to 1,000%. The Bench had flagged that such exorbitant mark-ups constituted “broad daylight dacoity” and placed an enormous financial burden on patients.
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