Supreme Court refused to grant any relief to manufacturers of BS-III (Bharat Stage III) non-compliant vehicles and has directed that such vehicles will not be sold in India with effect of April 1, 2017. Supreme Court on 29th March banned the sale and registration of vehicles which are not compliant with BS-IV emission norms from 1st April 2017 across the country. The apex court observed that the "health of the people is far far more important than the commercial interest of automobile manufactures". It is worth mentioning that BS-III (Bharat Stage III) fuel emission standard was introduced in the country in April 2005 (in NCR in 13 large cities) and was implemented nationwide in April 2010. On the other hand BS-IV standard was introduced in NCR and 13 large cities in April 2016 and comes into effect nationwide from 1 April 2017.
Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had earlier submitted data on manufacturing and sale of BS-III vehicles on a monthly basis from January 2016 and told the court that the companies were holding stock of around 8.24 lakh such vehicles including 96,000 commercial vehicles, over six lakh two-wheelers and around 40,000 three-wheelers. The manufacturers had also told the court that they were allowed to sell their stocks with old emission norms when new technology was brought in force on the previous two occasions at the time the industry had switched to BS-II and BS-III in 2005 and 2010.
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