SC refuses to extend BS-IV deadline

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea by automobile dealers for permission to sell and register vehicles following the Bharat Stage-IV standard emission norms beyond April 1, 2020.

The court had, in 2018, banned the sale and registration of these vehicles beyond this cut-off date. The plea filed by the automobile dealers, which came up before a Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta, sought an extension of a month because they were staring at the prospect of unsold inventory. “There is a slowdown... Kindly allow us to sell BS-IV vehicles to clear stock,” they argued.

The Bench pointed out that the cut-off date was passed in an order in 2018.

“You should not have produced BS-IV vehicles after that. Even after filing this application, you have produced these vehicles,” the court responded.

When the association’s counsel urged the court that their application was like a “mercy plea”, the bench said, “No”.

On October 24, 2018, a three-judge Bench led by Justice (now retired) Madan B. Lokur had concluded that pollution levels have reached an “alarming and critical” level all over India.

Bharat Stage (BS) emission norms are standards instituted by the government to regulate output of air pollutants from motor vehicles. The BS-IV norms were enforced across the country since April 2017. In 2016, the Centre had announced that India would skip the BS-V norms altogether and adopt BS-VI norms by 2020.