Is Metformin banned in India?

Metformin is the first-line drug for type 2 diabetes, on the National List of Essential Medicines and taken by tens of millions of Indians. It is not banned, and no proposal to ban it exists.

The question comes from three unrelated regulatory events. On 2 August 2024 the 156-FDC notification prohibited ursodeoxycholic acid + metformin, a liver-and-diabetes combination that most patients have never heard of; on a news list it appears as "metformin" in bold. On 11 April 2025 the CDSCO directed state licensing authorities to halt 35 combinations licensed without central approval, three of which contained metformin: metformin ER + glimepiride + dapagliflozin, glimepiride + metformin SR + voglibose, and a glimepiride 1 mg + metformin 500 mg tablet. The direction concerned products licensed by states without central approval, so a centrally approved glimepiride + metformin product is not covered by it; check the pack with your pharmacist. And in most months a metformin or glimepiride + metformin batch from some manufacturer appears in the CDSCO's quality alerts, in May 2026 a Taj Pharma batch was listed, because the drug is made in enormous volume.

None of these touches the licence for metformin itself. Glycomet, Glyciphage and their generics remain on sale.

A patient on a three-ingredient tablet should ask their doctor whether it is one of the halted products and what to replace it with. Everyone else should keep taking metformin as prescribed; an unsupervised gap in diabetes treatment is the real risk in this story.