The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that no Bharat Stage-IV vehicle could be sold anywhere in the country from April 2020, saying there could be “no compromise” with the health of citizens as it turned down a plea for extending the time limit.
The bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta said only vehicles meeting the BS-VI standard should be manufactured or sold from that date to combat rising pollution caused by automobiles.
The directives came on a public interest plea by environmentalist M.C. Mehta who had sought drastic steps to tackle pollution.
Advocate Aparajita Singh, appointed by the court to assist it as amicus curiae, had also said that non-BS-VI compliant vehicles should not be permitted to be sold after April 1, 2020.
The bench in its order said “no motor vehicle conforming to the emission standard Bharat Stage (BS) IV shall be sold or registered in the entire country with effect from 01.04.2020”.
The central government and the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers had pleaded for extending the time limit till September 20, 2020.
But the top court expressed concern over pollution levels across the country, exacerbated by automobile emissions. “We may note that the World Health Organisation’s database of more than 4,300 cities showed the Indian cities of Gwalior, Allahabad, Raipur, Delhi, Ludhiana, Kanpur, Varanasi and Patna as being among the most polluted in the world.
“Our attention has been drawn to various other documents which clearly show the deleterious effects of pollution on health. The hazards of pollution and its ill effect on the health of the citizens especially children are not limited to the city of Delhi or the NCR of Delhi but affect all the citizens of the country,” Justice Gupta, writing the judgment, said.
Amicus curiae Singh had drawn the court’s attention to the August 7 report of a parliamentary standing committee that had said air pollution was affecting everyone.
“There can be no two views that air pollution is hazardous to health. We may also take note of certain observations of the report of the (House) committee which show that one out of three children in Delhi suffers from respiratory problems,” Justice Gupta said.
The court pointed out that while automobile manufacturers have been canvassing that the shift to BS-VI-compliant vehicles was a long-drawn process that requires changes in technology, the same manufacturers were selling and exporting BS-VI-compliant vehicles to Europe and elsewhere.
“There can be no compromise with the health of the citizens and if one has to choose between health and wealth… health of the teeming millions of this country will have to take precedence over the greed of a few automobile manufacturers,” the court said.
“Once BSVI emission norms are enforced, there will be a 68 per cent improvement in PM2.5 (the deadliest form of air pollutants). This is not a small change. It is a vast improvement and the faster it is brought, the better it is,” Justice Gupta said.
The court also turned down a suggestion for introducing BS-VI-compliant vehicles initially in the Delhi-National Capital Region before gradually extending it to other states, pointing out that people had the tendency to circumvent rules.
“People have a tendency to buy cheaper vehicle(s) even from a neighbouring city. We also strongly feel that the problem of pollution is not limited to the NCR of Delhi but it is a problem which has engulfed the entire country, especially the major cities,” the court said.
