With the Road Transport and Highways Ministry notifying the percentage of complaints from owners of motor vehicles that will prompt mandatory recall of vehicles, India will usher in the mandatory vehicle recall regime from April 1, 2021.

Simply put, on the vehicle recall portal of the government, if lots of vehicle owners report an identical defect in a particular vehicle, then the portal manager has to inform the “designated officer” on the same to find out if a mandatory vehicle recall is required.

The number of identical complaints that will trigger such a vehicle recall process varies based on type of vehicles and volumes of vehicles produced, as per the Road Ministry notification. The notification was dated March 11 and published on March 16. India has a voluntary vehicle recall regime now.

A slew of rules

The Road Transport and Highways Ministry has notified a slew of rules defining procedure for recall of defective motor vehicles, investigation process and officials who can conduct such investigations, obligations of manufacturers, importers and retrofitters, accreditation of testing agencies and type approval procedures.

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For instance, for two-wheelers with annual sales of up to 3,000 units, if 20 per cent owners report identical defect, then the mandatory recall process will start. If two-wheelers sold in a year are 3001-60,000 units, then a mandatory recall process will be triggered if 600 vehicle owners plus 10 per cent (of annual sales) report identical complaints — which works out to 30 per cent of sales at lower end and 11 per cent at upper end of sales. For two-wheelers sold over 60,000 units, if 6,300 owners plus two per cent of owners (of annual sales) report identical complaints, then the vehicle recall process will start, as per the Ministry.

Similarly, for 3-wheelers and quadricycles, the recall process will be triggered at 20 per cent identical complaints (for up to 500 unit annual sales); 100 plus 10 per cent complaints (for 501-10,000 units of annual sales); and 1,050 plus two per cent (10,000 and above annual sales).

For vehicles that can carry up to eight passengers like cars, the recall process can be triggered at 20 per cent of identical complaint for vehicles registering up to 500 unit of annual sales; 100 plus 10 per cent for 501-10,000 units of annual sales and 1050 plus 2.5 per cent for vehicles seeing over 10,000 a year sales.

For bigger vehicles like buses and trucks, vehicle recall will be triggered at three per cent of yearly sales.

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