Ramesh Kumar Verma, Haryana

Thirty-four year old Ramesh Kumar Verma is a Haryana-based RTI Activist who took up cudgels against fake medicines being fed to patients at Government hospitals in Hissar. Verma decided to take up the fight after some poor people informed him that the medicines being supplied at Government hospital were not having any effect. Verma says, “When some poor people informed me about this I grew a little suspicious and decided to file RTIs to bring out the truth.” 

Verma hence filed three RTIs with the Haryana Health Department, Delhi Health Department and Central Health Ministry for information related to the details of medicines that were found to be sub-standard or fake after sample testing. He also asked about details of how much of these medicines were already given to patients in Government hospitals and what was done of the remaining stock.

He initially did not get any information. It was only after the intervention of the State Information Commission, that he received information. As the information started pouring in he found that many medicines purchased for distribution in Government hospitals and dispensaries, were found to be of inferior quality. Even more shocking was the revelation that many of the tablets were already given to the patients by the time the results came out.  He says, “It is mainly the poor who visit Government hospitals and their life was put in danger due to this.”

These medicines were even supplied to Para Military Force hospitals from where the medicines had already been consumed by many army officers as well. The information received also reveled that the same thing had happened with patients of PGI Chandigarh and Government hospitals and health centers run by the Delhi Health Department.

The information also reveled that many manufacturers simply agreed to replace the lot when their medicines were found to be fake. In fact, some others had even gone upto the court challenging the test report of their samples.

After receiving the information, Verma first sent it to various media houses. As the issue started to come out in media, it was raised in the Parliament. After this, the applicant claims that the Haryana Government was therefore forced to stop buying medicines from small manufacturers with a turnover of less than 30 crores. Verma says, “Now there has been an order that sampling tests would be conducted first to identify spurious drugs before being distributed to people. The Government has even tied up with Shri Ram Labs for conducting the tests as well.”

Similarly, he filed another RTI with the Delhi Drug Control Department regarding information on the details of medicines procured by the health centers run by GOI or its related Department in the past five years which were found to be fake and spurious.

Verma received a reply that the information being voluminous would take time to compile. He went to the Central Information Commission which gave a very good order. Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi ordered all the information regarding drugs and cosmetics which were found to be fake or spurious to be put up on the website in a prescribed format by the 10th of every following month. Henceforth, the list is displayed on the website and revised every month.

Another interesting case that Verma took up was the non-disclosure of assets and liabilities of Parliamentarians. As per the law, MPs have to declare their assets and liabilities within 90 days of taking oath under Rule 3 of the Members of the Lok Sabha (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Rules, 2004), which they were not doing.

Verma filed an RTI with the Lok Sabha Secretariat asking details about MPs who have not declared their assets and liabilities yet. He also asked about in such cases what action is taken upon them as per the rules and what action has been taken on such MPs so far.  He received a list of 110 MPs who had not filed their details of assets and liabilities. He was told that the Secretariat time and again had requested the MPs to declare their assets and liabilities. He was informed that as per the rule if they did not submit such information they could even lose their membership in the Parliament. After this, 59 MPs have declared their assets. The remaining 51 MPs were warned by the Speaker Meira Kumar, soon after which they also followed suit.