India / Uttarakhand HC issues notice to Centre on Patanjali's Coronil

Dehradun: The Uttarakhand high court on Tuesday issued notice to the Centre on a public interest litigation alleging that yoga guru Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna, CEO of Patanjali Ayurved claimed that the company’s medicine Coronil is a cure for Covid-19 when they hadn’t sought permission from authorities concerned for manufacturing such a medicine.

The Centre has to reply on Wednesday.

Advocate Mani Kumar who is based in Udham Singh Nagar. Kumar in his PIL has alleged that Patanjali’s Divya Pharmacy had sought permission from the state government for immunity boosters, but they claimed that their ayurvedic medicine Coronil was a cure for Covid-19. Kumar said they hadn’t even sought permission from the Ayush ministry or Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) regarding their so-called cure for the Covid-19.

The petitioner who appeared in person said Ramdev and Balkrishna misled people by claiming that an ayurvedic medicinal cure for Covid-19 has been found, without the required permissions from the authorities concerned whether at the state level or the Central government level.

“Now Rajasthan authorities are saying they hadn’t given any permission for clinical trials at NIMS Hospital Jaipur”, he said.

“After hearing our PIL, HC issued notice to the assistant solicitor general of India for Uttarakhand representing Central government to reply on Wednesday when the matter will be heard again,” said Kumar

Acharya Balkrishna alleged a conspiracy was being hatched against them. “We have not claimed anything for which we didn’t conduct clinical trials or didn’t make. If Ayush ministry asks us for more clinical trials we are ready to conduct them again”, he said

When contacted, Gagan (who goes by his first name), public relations in-charge of Balkrishna, said that they have not yet received any information on court directions or notice in PIL in the High Court on the issue.

Balakrishna also said that Patanjali never claimed nor advertised that they had discovered anti-coronavirus medicine.

“We cited Coronil as ayurvedic medicine for immunity boosting, fever, cough and allergic problems. We did clinical trials and after results got out we said that we had these medicines and when given to Covid-19 positive patients they got cured,” he said.

He said, “We conducted clinical trials of Coronil on corona positive patients who got cured. Only results of clinical trial based curing of positive patients were claimed by us. We are being misinterpreted, we also did not label our medicine that it cures Corona. We had sought licensing for immunity boosting and made medicine on that license only.”

On June 24, a day after yoga guru Ramdev promoted Patanjali Ayurved launched a new Ayurvedic product claiming it can cure Covid-19, Uttarakhand licensing authority (Ayush), issued a notice to Patanjali’s Divya Pharmacy stressing that the license issued by it was given for producing immunity boosters and not Covid-19 ayurvedic medicine. Divya Pharmacy was directed to reply within seven days.

On June 23, Ramdev had announced “Coronil” and “Swasari” as cure for Covid-19, stressing that they “conducted a clinical case study and clinical controlled trial, and found 69 percent of patients recovered in three days and 100 patients recovered in seven days”.

Following these claims, the Union AYUSH ministry demanded a clarification from Patanjali Ayurved over its claim of having developed a cure for the coronavirus disease and asked it to stop advertising the product till the claim is verified.