Unified portal of Central Bureau of Narcotics to bring efficiency: FinMin

A unified portal of the Central Bureau of Narcotics(CBN) will instil efficiency and transparency and reduce the time taken by the pharma industry to get trade licence, the finance ministry said on Tuesday.

Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra on Tuesday launched the unified portal of the CBN.

CBN is a central government organization dealing with the international trade of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, and precursor chemicals under the ambit of various United Nations Conventions and the provisions of NDPS Act, 1985.

The ministry in a statement said these substances bear dual potential as strong medicinal, scientific, and industrial use as well as a diversion for illicit use.

Therefore, there is a need for striking a fine balance between the availability of these substances to the people and maintaining compliance with the law in this regard. These challenges envisioned the Bureau to conceptualize the use of a digital platform as an effective tool to synergize and sustain balance between facilitation and compliance management, the ministry said.

This portal is calibrated to have database integration and ingestion with other government services including Bharat Kosh, GST, PAN- NSDL validation, e-Sanchit, and UIDAI facilitating single point services for obtaining the licences from CBN.

The exporter, importer, and manufacturer of Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances (NDPS), and controlled substances are expected to be benefitted in an ecosystem which supports and harbours user-friendly, secure transactions, cloud-based storage, simplified process for applicants to obtain various licences.

The applicants may file applications from anywhere and anytime 24X7 basis eliminating the need of physical interaction and can raise queries with the department which shall be responded through portal. This will leverage drastic reduction in 'processing-time' and conserving the resources of the trade for other fruitful business activities, the ministry added.

The unified portal of Central Bureau of Narcotics will instil the efficiency, transparency and accountability in department users with twin objective to cater the need of pharma and chemical industry for synergistic growth of the drugs & pharma sector and boosting economy for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat and ensure availability of the essential narcotic drugs and medicines to the patients, the ministry said.