# Supreme Court questions Centre over wide medicine price gap 2026-10-27T11:31:35+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 5 independent outlets (6 source reports) The Supreme Court on Tuesday, 27 October, questioned the Centre over the wide gap between the maximum retail price of medicines and the price retailers pay, asking why the system appears to favour pharmaceutical manufacturers. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta described the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority as a 'totally defunct' body. Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati told the court that medicine prices in India are among the lowest worldwide and that the government's policy is not to bring the entire ecosystem under regulatory control. The bench reserved its order in the case. On 12 October, the court had already criticised the Centre for capping trade margins only on anti-cancer drugs at 30 per cent of MRP, a measure the government says will save patients about Rs 2,500 crore annually. ## Indian Opinion Analysis The four outlets that reported the oral hearing (newindianexpress.com, abplive.com, deccanchronicle.com and hindustantimes.com) uniformly centred the Supreme Court bench's criticism of the Centre, quoting the same exchanges on MRP-retailer price gaps and the NPPA being 'totally defunct'. CnbcTV18 alone added the detail that the bench described hospital mark-ups as 'dacoity', included the hospitals' defence of their in-house pharmacy model, and noted the government's broader four-pillar policy argument against blanket price control. The discrepancy across outlets is minimal: the four PTI-carrying outlets stay with the court-versus-Centre dynamic and omit the hospitals' side, while cnbcTV18 broadens the story to include the hospital industry's counter-arguments and the government's industry-growth stance. The bench reserved its order, with no date set. ## Coverage Coverage: 3 sources, 3 neutral - PTI - newindianexpress.com Leads with court's question to Centre, includes NPPA 'defunct' remark and Centre's defence verbatim. - abplive.com Identical PTI text, introduces auto-generated Q&A but does not alter framing. - deccanchronicle.com Straight PTI wire with no added analysis or editorial comment. - cnbctv18.com (neutral report) Adds hospitals' defence and term 'dacoity', broader framing than other outlets. - hindustantimes.com (neutral report) PTI copy, headline uses pull quote from bench, otherwise neutral. This brief was synthesised by AI from the 3 sources linked above, so one read covers every framing they carry. Tags: Aishwarya Bhati, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, Supreme Court of India Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/supreme-court-questions-centre-over-wide-medicine-price-gap/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/supreme-court-questions-centre-over-wide-medicine-price-gap/#story-in-brief How this brief was made: an AI model read the reports linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. Stance labels are editorial classifications of how each outlet framed this story, assigned by the same model, not ratings of the outlets. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/