Clearing the air

The decision of the Supreme Court to disallow sales of Bharat Stage III vehicles from April 1 should come as no surprise to those familiar with the mood of the apex court in recent times on the issue of pollution caused by automobiles. Time and again the court has clearly indicated that it will not hesitate to write out drastic prescriptions to help improve the air quality. Just last year it cracked down on diesel vehicles in the national capital region, disallowing registration of cars of over 2000-cc engine capacity. Now it has come out strongly against vehicle manufacturers for interpreting a government notification in a manner that favoured them even if it meant putting more polluting vehicles on the road. The dispute is over whether the cut-off date of April 1 for stoppage of vehicles with BS-III engines applies to the manufacture or sale of vehicles. On this was hanging the fate of an inventory of over 96,000 commercial vehicles and 6 lakh two-wheelers fitted with BS-III engines. The industry warned of massive losses if these vehicles were not allowed to be sold, but the apex court bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta ignored this, and rightly so, holding that the health of millions of citizens is more important than the commercial interests of a few manufacturers.

The judgment is a slap on the face for both the industry and the Centre for failing to act in the larger public good. The timetable for transition to BS-IV was known for a long time and the industry could, and ought, to have planned its production in a manner that left little inventory of the older BSIII vehicles as of the cut-off date. Instead, it followed a short-sighted approach and continued to produce the cheaper BS-III versions in an effort to sell as many of them as possible before the deadline. The Centre could have stepped in when the issue broke into the open a couple of months back and pushed the industry to move towards producing BS-IV vehicles. Things had clearly changed for the worse on the pollution front many years ago when the transition to BS-III and BS-II happened; manufacturers were then allowed to sell their inventory after the deadline. The Centre was clearly guilty of batting for the wrong side on this critical issue that would have lead to putting 8 lakh more polluting vehicles on the roads.

The other side of this transition to superior emission norms is availability of BS-IV grade fuel across the country. It is a dark area now with vehicle manufacturers alleging that the higher grade fuel is not available outside the metros. This would not just defeat the purpose of superior emission norms but also lead to problems for vehicle owners, as using BS-III grade fuel in BS-IV vehicles could lead to under-performance by the vehicle. The Centre needs to act quickly on this before another controversy breaks out.

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