Centre shifts gear to BS6

New Delhi: In a major step to check vehicular pollution, the Centre on Wednesday decided to directly implement Bharat Stage (BS) VI by April 2020, and skip BS-V altogether. As of now, BS-IV is being implemented in some cities, and will be made the norm across India by April 2017.

This was decided at a meeting chaired by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari, attended by heavy industries minister Anant Geete, minister of state for environment Prakash Javadekar and MoS petroleum Dharmendra Pradhan.

It comes at a time when the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi has started implementing the “odd-even” curbs for two weeks to restrict the use of private cars to check rising pollution in the nation’s capital. The Centre will soon issue a notification on this.

The petroleum ministry has promised to make BS-VI fuel available across India by April 1, 2020.

“The government decided to leapfrog from BS-IV to BS-VI directly by April 1, 2020. We decided to skip BS-V emission norms. It is a bold step (showing) commitment to the environment,” Mr Gadkari said.

The road transport and highways ministry has withdrawn its earlier draft which suggested shifting to BS-VI after first switching over to BS-V.

Mr Gadkari said Indian refiners will need to make investments of around Rs 30,000 crores to supply BS-VI compliant fuels.

“I appeal to the automobile manufacturers to cooperate in this in the larger interests of the country,” he said.

The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday expanded the ambit of hearing by seeking responses on worsening air quality in metropolises Nagpur, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Pune.