A welcome decision by Supreme Court to ban BS-III vehicles from April 1st, 2017

The Supreme Court has banned registration of BS-III vehicles in India from 1^st April 2017. The Apex court said that health of millions of citizens was more important that commercial interests of manufacturers and directed the government not to allow registration of polluting BS III vehicles after March 31^st 2017. As per some reports, auto industry is stuck with inventory of BS-III vehicles worth 12000 crores. Pawan Goenka, MD of Mahindra & Mahindra and former president of industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) said that “I am speechless”. SIAM current president Vinod Dasari (also head of Ashok Leyland) said that this decision unfortunate as it causes undue stress on the entire industry.India adopted the Bharat norms in 2000 based on Euro norms and it is known for everybody that gradually India will move towards BS-V and higher. BS-III was gradually banned from all metros a few years back and around half of states have already moved to BS-IV gradually. And rest of India was scheduled to move on BS-IV from April 1^st 2017. This information was in public domain from at least 7 years. Still auto companies continued to manufacture BS-III vehicles. They now blame the non-availability of BS-IV fuel across India. Also they had hoped to get a stay of few months from Supreme court on implementation of BS-IV like the stay they had got when previous norms (BS-I, BS-II and BS-III) was scheduled to come in force. Whether it is the banning of diesel commercial vehicles in Delhi or implementing Bharat Stage norms, High Courts & Supreme court have given some respite in past. But at that time, these norms were new and sudden change was difficult, so the courts had given some respite. Today half of India has already switched to BS-IV and there is no technological challenge to manufacture more BS-IV vehicles. But still auto-companies are demanding respite of few moth from implementation on account of huge inventory. It is a baffling question that why auto companies continued to produce BS-III vehicles right to the end.There may be many factors behind this decision and some of the factors may be genuine but it is very difficult for me to understand the logic. What I see is that they thought that Supreme Court will stay the BS-III ban by a few months and they would continue selling BS-III vehicles to make more profits. And most of the time, the prices of vehicles have been increased when any such norms are implemented. Now they are left with two choices – Convert the BS-III vehicles to BS-IV or export them. And it will cost money and naturally it is a strain on finances of auto companies. Apart from green lobbies, a few auto companies like Bajaj, Bharat Benz etc. demanded for ban on BS-III vehicles. If Bajaj can foresee the end of BS-III then why Tatas & Mahindras can see the ban coming in last few years.China had already implemented China V norms in 2013. India also lags behind the European auto emission norms by at least five years. In India, the value of human life is very less. We have still not implemented the Vehicle Crash safety norms even today. It was supposed to be implanted in 2014. India is behind Europe by many years in implementing other safety norms like Seat belt norms, pedestrian protection norms, free Motion Headform Impactors tests etc. This list is endless. There is no Conformity of production test for vehicles. Auto Manufactures generally select select one of the best vehicles and take that vehicle to government certified vehicle test agencies like ARAI, NATRIP, ICAT, VRDE and do all the safety tests there on that selected vehicles. And the quality of the vehicles (with regard to safety regulation) rolling out of assembly line may have been compromised. In USA, their safety agency FMVSS buys the vehicles (new & old) and then conduct all the safety tests. IN USA, the emission is tested on 10 years old vehicles. It is not fare for us to compare Indian Vehicles with US vehicles. At least, we can meet the European safety norms (as India has historically followed European safety norms).I hope that this is a new lesson for auto Industry and Indian Government. The prime focus of auto industry should be safety of people along with profitability. Government should also push for cleaner & safer vehicles in consultation with the industry.