Why is it in the News?

The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to frame a policy within six months to replace heavy-duty diesel vehicles and replace them with BS VI vehicles, observing that the right to clean air is not the entitlement of people living in Delhi alone.

What are BS-VI Norms?

• Bharat stage (BS) emission standards are laid down by the government to regulate the output of air pollutants from internal combustion engines and spark-ignition engine equipment, including motor vehicles.
• The central government has mandated that vehicle makers must manufacture, sell and register only BS-VI (BS6) vehicles from April 1, 2020.
• The first emission norms were introduced in India in 1991 for petrol and in 1992 for diesel vehicles.
  • Following this, the catalytic converter became mandatory for petrol vehicles and unleaded petrol was introduced in the market.

What is the Difference Between BS4 and BS6? 

• Both BS-IV and BS-VI are unit emission norms that set the maximum permissible levels for pollutants that an automotive or a two-wheeler exhaust can emit.
  • Compared to the BS4, BS6 emission standards are stricter
  • Whereas makers use this variation to update their vehicles with new options and safety standards, the biggest modification comes in the permissible emission norms.

What area unit BSI, BSII, BSIII, BSIV, and BSVI emission norms?

• The abbreviation BS refers to ‘Bharat Stage’.
  • It is prefixed to the iteration of the actual emission norms.
  • The primary rules with the soubriquet Asian nation 2000 were introduced in the year 2000, with the second and third iterations being introduced in 2001 and 2005 with the soubriquet BSII (BS2) and BSIII (BS3), respectively.
• The fourth iteration, BSIV, was introduced in 2017 and therefore the delay between the introduction of BS3 and BS4 resulted in fast-tracking the BSVI or BS6 emission norms rather than BSV (BS5) norms.
  • On 29 April 1999, the Supreme Court of India ruled that all vehicles in the country had to meet Euro I or India 2000 norms by June 1, 1999, and Euro II would be mandatory in the National Capital Region (NCR) from April 2000.
    • Carmakers were not prepared for this transition and in a subsequent judgment, the implementation of Euro II was deferred.
• In 2002, the government accepted the report submitted by the Mashelkar committee, which proposed a road map for the rollout of Euro-based emission norms in India.
  • It also recommended a phased implementation of future norms, with regulations being implemented in major cities first and extended to the rest of the country after a few years.
• Based on the recommendations of the committee, the National Auto Fuel policy was announced officially in 2003.
  • The road map for the implementation of the BS norms was laid out in 2010.
  • The policy also created guidelines for auto fuels, reduction of pollution from older vehicles and R&D for air quality data creation and health administration.
• The standards and the timeline for implementation are set by the Central Pollution Control Board under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
• Since October 2010, Bharat Stage (BS) III norms have been enforced across the country.
• BS-IV emission norms were put in place in 13 major cities from April 2010, and the entire country from April 2017.
• In 2016, the government announced that the country would skip the BS-V norms altogether and adopt BS-VI norms by 2020.