The Proposed CCTV Rule for Medical Stores: What It Asks, and How to Object

On 8 September 2026 the Health Ministry published a draft amendment to the Drugs Rules, 1945 that would make CCTV compulsory in every shop that sells prescription medicines. It is not law yet. The draft is open for objections and suggestions, and a proposal like this is at its easiest to shape now, before it is final.

Here is what the draft says, what it leaves unsaid, what it would cost a small shop, and how to put your view on record. The short version: the idea is simple, the details are thin, and those missing details are exactly what the objections should be about.

What the draft actually says

The notification is G.S.R. 791(E), dated 8 September 2026. As reported, it inserts a new sub-rule (2A) under rule 65, the rule that already governs how a retail licensee supplies drugs. It covers:

• Who: licensed premises that supply drugs "otherwise than by way of wholesale dealing", which means retail counters. Wholesale dealers are outside it.
• What: the supply of drugs on the prescription of a Registered Medical Practitioner. In practice that means your Schedule H, H1 and X sales, which is how the Ministry has described its aim.
• The requirement: a CCTV system installed and maintained at the licensed premises.
• Retention: footage kept for a minimum of three months.
• Start date: none yet. It takes effect only from a date the government names when the final rule is published.

The stated purpose is to curb the sale of prescription drugs without a prescription, and to give regulators a way to check it after the fact.

What the draft leaves open

From what has been published, the draft says a camera must exist and footage must be kept. It is much quieter about everything else, and each gap is a practical problem for a shop owner:

• Where the camera points. At the counter? The till? The shelf of H1 stock? A camera that must "cover" prescription sales could reasonably mean any of these, and an inspector and a shop owner could read it differently.
• Who may see the footage, and how. Nothing reported says whether an inspector views it at the shop, takes a copy, or can ask for it remotely, or what happens to it afterwards.
• Patients' privacy. A counter camera records faces, and often the prescription in someone's hand. What a person buys at a chemist is health information. Chemists' associations, starting with Punjab's, have raised this first, and it is the strongest objection on the table.
• What "maintained" means. A camera that goes dark in a power cut, or a recorder whose disk fills up and quietly stops, is common. Does a gap in the footage count as a breach?
• Small and rural shops. Nothing reported suggests a threshold, a phase-in, or any allowance for shops where power and space are both short.

What it would cost a small shop

For a single-counter chemist, the hardware is a one-time expense, not a crippling one: a couple of cameras, a recorder, and a hard disk. The part people get wrong is the disk. Three months of footage is a storage question. Many off-the-shelf kits ship with a drive sized for a few weeks at their default quality. Before you buy anything, ask the installer to confirm the retention in days at your camera count and resolution. Get it in writing.

The running costs are the ones nobody quotes: a UPS or inverter line so it keeps recording through a power cut, a replacement disk every few years, and the time to check it is actually recording. None of this has to be bought today. The rule is a draft, and the final version may change what's needed.

What a camera can't show

Video shows a strip changing hands. It doesn't show which medicine it was, which batch, whose prescription, or which doctor wrote it. That is what the prescription register is for, and it is still what an inspector asks for first.

If the rule does come in, the two work together: the footage shows a sale happened at 4:12 pm, and the register says what it was. A register backfilled from memory the night before an inspection won't line up with a timestamped video, so record the prescriber at the moment you bill. Our guide to the Schedule H1 prescription register lists the exact fields.

In DravyaOS, a Schedule H, H1 or X line on a bill asks for the prescriber as you bill it. For H1 and X it asks for the prescriber's address too. The details are saved onto the bill itself, so a doctor renamed later can't change an old register entry, and bills that went out without a prescriber are listed back to you to fix.

How to send an objection

Draft rules under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act are open for objections and suggestions for 30 days from the date copies of the Gazette are made available to the public. For a notification dated 8 September, that window ends in early October. Check the exact date on the Gazette copy at egazette.gov.in (search for G.S.R. 791(E)) and don't leave it to the last day.

As reported, objections go to the Under Secretary (Drugs), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, by post or by email to drugsdiv-mohfw@gov.in. Confirm the address on the notification itself, because the Ministry has recently moved offices. A useful objection is short and specific:

• Quote the notification number, G.S.R. 791(E), in the subject line.
• Say who you are: your licence type, where the shop is, and how many counters it has.
• Make one point per paragraph, and suggest a fix for each one. "Specify that the camera covers the counter, not the customer's face" is more useful than "we oppose this".
• Good points to raise: patient privacy and who may access the footage, a clear placement rule, a grace period or support for small and rural shops, and whether a power-cut gap counts as a breach.
• If your chemists' association is sending a joint response, send yours as well. Individual letters from real shops are harder to wave away.

What to do this week

• Don't buy anything yet. The rule may change, and so may what it asks for.
• Do send an objection or suggestion before the 30 days are up.
• Do tidy your prescription records now. Whatever happens to the camera rule, the register is required already, and it's the first thing an inspector opens.

This is a draft, and the picture may change. We'll update this page when the final rule is notified.

Related reading: every 2026 drug-rule change a chemist should know, and drug licence and record-keeping rules.