BS4 Vehicles Sold Till March Can Be Registered – SC

In a big relief to the Indian automobile industry as well as customers, Supreme Court today lifted the ban on the registration of BS4 vehicles.

In its verdict, the top court said that vehicles sold before the lockdown are eligible for registration. It had earlier, in one of its orders, had expressed displeasure over the spike in the sale of such BS4 vehicles during the lockdown.

As per the Thursday verdict, BS4 vehicles sold after March 31,2020, or the ones the details of which are not uploaded to the eVahan Portal will not be registered.

However, the order is not applicable to the Delhi-NCR region, and BS4 compliant vehicles sold in the region will not be registered.

Government data reveals that between the period of March 12 and March 31, 2020, more than 11 lakh BS4 compliant vehicles were sold in the country. The figure runs into more than 2.5 lakh just between March 29 and March 31, 2020.

The SC bench, headed by Justice Arun Mishra, had earlier passed verdicts imposing a ban on the registration of such vehicles till further orders.  

BS4 or Bharat Stage IV norms were implemented throughout the country in 2017. However, in 2016, the government had announced that it would skip BS V, and would directly implement BS VI norms by 2020.

Bharat Stage norms are emission standards modelled on the Euro norms for checking the menace of air pollution. Vehicles compliant with these norms are considered more environment-friendly in relation to the others.