SC bans sale and registration of Non-BS-IV Compliant Vehicles

The Supreme Court (SC) on 29 March 2017 banned the sale and registration of vehicles which are not compliant with Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) emission norms.

A bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta ruled that the BS-IV emission norms will come into effect from 1 April 2017 across the country.

The court further ruled that all the vehicle registering authorities under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, are prohibited from registering non-BS-IV compliant vehicles except on proof that such a vehicle has already been sold on or before 31 March 2017.

The court also noted that vehicles, that do not meet the Bharat Stage-IV emission standards, take primacy over the health hazard of millions of countrymen due to increased air pollution.

The ruling came on pleas seeking ban on the sale and registration of BS-III compliant vehicles after 1 April 2017.

Background
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) earlier submitted data on manufacturing and sale of BS-III vehicles on a monthly basis and told the Supreme Court that the companies were holding stock of around 8.24 lakh such vehicles.

The manufacturers, in turn, told the court that they were allowed to sell their stocks with old emission norms when BS-IV norms were 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 respectively.

Currently, BS-IV petrol and diesel vehicles are being supplied in whole of Northern India covering Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi and parts of Rajasthan and western UP.