(FE)
Emphasizing on the urgent need to move to a cleaner fuel as early as possible, the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed that only Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI) vehicles shall be sold across the country from April 1, 2020. A bench comprising justices MB Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta rejected the Centre and the automobile manufacturers’ request for a three-month and six-month extension of the deadline so that the latter can sell their non-BS-VI vehicles.
“Any extension of time in introducing the new norms which is not absolutely necessary adversely impacts the health of the citizens… There is sufficient time for the manufacturers to change over to the new system, and therefore, we see no reason why they should be given a window of three or six months for sale of accumulated vehicles. Every vehicle sold after the cut-off date of April 1, 2020, is bound to cause more pollution and, therefore, the manufacturers cannot be permitted to sell any non-BS-VI compliant vehicle on or after April 1, 2020,” the court said.
Last year, the SC had banned the sale and registration of vehicles not compliant with BS-IV norms after March 31, 2017. It further said, on the one hand, the government has been proactive in spending huge amounts of money to move to the BSVI technology, on the other, the automobile industry is coming up with a variety of untenable excuses just to delay the introduction of BS-VI compliant vehicles by a few months.
