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Journalism of Courage
With the BS-IV norms coming into force from April 1, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that vehicles not complying with the new standards will be not be allowed to be sold or registered in the country. A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta observed that “health of the people is far far more important than the commercial interest of automobile manufactures”.
The apex court was hearing a petition by auto manufacturers who sought relief on sale of existing stock that are not BS-IV compliant. The government had also come out in support and urged the top court to make an exemption. According to The Times of India, there are 8,24,275 BS-II vehicles in the country. It includes 96,724 commercial vehicles, 6,71,308 two-wheelers, 40,048 three-wheelers and 16,198 cars, the paper reported. The manufacturers had also told the court that they were allowed to sell their stocks with old emission norms when new technology was brought in force on the previous two occasions at the time the industry had switched to BS-II and BS-III in 2005 and 2010.
Earlier the court asked automobile companies to not frustrate the efforts of the government to roll-out BS-IV technology in an effort to curb rising pollution levels across the country. “The Centre had spent thousands of crores of rupees to upgrade technology to produce BS-IV fuel and the companies could not be allowed to frustrate the government’s initiative to check increasing pollution levels by selling around 8.2 lakh BS-III vehicles which they are holding in stock,” a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta had said.
With PTI inputs
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