A welcome step

The Supreme Court has been sensitive to environmental concerns, and to the incalculably high toll on the health of the population inflicted by vehicular fumes, in ordering on Wednesday that BS-III compliant motor vehicles — commercial transport, three-wheelers or two-wheelers make up the bulk of already produced stock in that category — will not be sold by any manufacturer or dealer starting April 1 this year, and that no transport authority in the country shall register them from that date.

The court has rightly taken a strong view of the fact that the manufacturers didn’t take any proactive steps to move full-scale to producing motor vehicles compliant with Bharat Stage-IV norms sufficiently early, when the March 31 deadline for ending the BS-III vehicles was known long in advance.

Indeed, the January-March data for the current year shows production was rapid in this period. This suggests inventories were piled up with a calculation, possibly in the hope that the courts would permit some time to dispose of stocks. Now that the petroleum ministry has spent Rs 30,000 crores to upgrade to the production of fuel fit for BS-IV vehicles, there is less reason to succumb to the victimhood aspect of the manufacturers’ pleadings.

While taking the right step on this matter, the courts must also appreciate that total pollution, specially in our bigger cities, is unlikely to show any significant decrease unless the number of vehicles on our roads are seriously reduced. That means public policies must increasingly focus on expanded and more efficient public transport systems and disincentivising the motor vehicles trade.