Can a prescription be written in Hindi or a regional language? What the conduct regulations ask for, and what the 2026 Uttar Pradesh appeal does and does not change.

No Indian rule fixes the language a prescription must be written in. The regulations your state medical council enforces, the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002, ask that drugs be prescribed by generic name, legibly, and preferably in capital letters. The Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 tell the chemist what a prescription must show before a Schedule H, H1 or X medicine is sold. Neither says English, Hindi or anything else. A prescription in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil or Bengali that a chemist can read and match to a generic name is within the rules; so is one in English.

This post covers the language question only. What the paper must contain is in what must a prescription contain, and the generic-name clause has its own post: generic name prescription rules.

What do the conduct regulations say about language?

Regulation 1.5 is the only clause about how a drug is written. The Gazette of 8 October 2016 substituted it with this text:

Every physician should prescribe drugs with generic names legibly and preferably in capital letters and he/she shall ensure that there is a rational prescription and use of drugs

Three words carry the rule: generic, legibly, capitals. "Legibly" is about handwriting, not script. "Capital letters" is a preference, and the Devanagari and Dravidian scripts have no upper case, so the capitals point cannot apply to them; the generic-name and legibility points still do. The rest of the regulations that touch the prescription paper are about identity: regulation 1.4.1 (registration number on every prescription), 3.7.2 (name and designation in full with registration particulars on the letterhead) and 1.4.2 (only recognised qualifications after your name). None of them names a language.

The 2002 regulations are the ones in force. The NMC notified its own 2023 conduct regulations on 2 August 2023 and held them in abeyance on 23 August 2023, adopting the 2002 regulations "with immediate effect". We checked the NMC e-gazette list on 30 October 2026 and found no later professional-conduct notification.

What does the chemist need to read?

Rule 65(10) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 says a prescription for a Schedule H, H1 or X medicine shall "be in writing and be signed by the person giving it with his usual signature and be dated by him", "specify the name and address of the person for whose treatment it is given", and "indicate the total amount of the medicine to be supplied and the dose to be taken". Rule 65(3) then requires the chemist to enter the supply in a prescription register with "the name of the drug or preparation and the quantity". The rule does not say which language any of this is in. In practice, the chemist has to match what you wrote to the name printed on the pack, so a drug name in a regional script has to be one the chemist can map to that label. That is a working constraint, not a legal one.

What happened in Uttar Pradesh in 2026?

In late September 2026 the Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and Health Minister, Brajesh Pathak, issued an open letter to doctors asking them to write the names of medicines and tests in Hindi on prescriptions, and said doctors prescribing in Hindi would be felicitated. That is how Medical Dialogues reported it on 28 September 2026. We looked for a government order, circular or gazette notification making Hindi prescriptions compulsory in the state and did not find one as of 30 October 2026. On what we could find, it is an appeal with an incentive attached, not a rule, and nothing in it changes the 2002 regulations that your council applies.

If your state does issue an order, it will come from the state health department or the state medical council and will say which documents it covers. Until then, read the appeal as what it is: a request to make the parchi readable to the patient.

So which language should the clinic use?

Separate two things on the page: the medicine lines and everything else. The medicine lines have one job, to be read without error by the chemist and the patient. The rest of the page, which is the instructions, timing, diet notes and when to come back, has a different job, to be understood by the patient at home.

If you write bilingual medicine lines, keep the generic name in the chemist's script as the primary line and the Hindi or regional name beneath it, so a mismatch between the two cannot send the wrong strip home. The regulation asks for a rational prescription; a line that can be read two ways is the opposite of that.