ICMR is the central decision making body for India's Covid response.

It's decisions are made in secret, it's database is inaccessible to outsiders, and its recommendations are routinely questioned by medical experts.

It's been criticised for:

😷withholding data about Covid and its variants that left physicians in the country flying blind.

😷signing off on the health ministry’s decision to recommend the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid therapy.

😷promoting a homegrown vaccine before it had passed key clinical trials

😷recommending prescriptions that artificially inflated the cost for Covid management

😷 benefiting the pharmaceutical industry rather than patients

Medical researchers have appealed for access to its database that could help study, predict, and curb the spread of the coronavirus. They have been rebuffed.

Here's Lancet's opinion of ICMR:

“The Indian Council of Medical Research has been singled out by experts for straying from scientific evidence, appearing at worst politically motivated and at best overly optimistic.”

A deep dive into ICMR's role in India's Covid mismanagement:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-19/a-secretive-body-is-making-questionable-covid-decisions-in-india