Some of the major Indian manufacturers have agreed to produce BS-VI fuel compliant cars from April 2020. However, they have a few demands that they expect to be fulfilled by the government.
Nitin Gadkari, the road transport minister, had called for a meeting to discuss the roll out the BS-VI fuel compliant vehicles. CEOs of major automobile manufacturers including Pawan Goenka, Vikram Kirloskar, Sumit Sawhney, Pawan Munjal and Rajiv Bajaj attended this meeting. Their first demand is to unveil a scrapping policy to phase out old vehicles. Secondly, they also want to ensure that there are no policy flip-flops in shifting the clean fuel timeline due to pressure from any quarter.
They agreed to the government's BS-VI emission norms and, despite this being a big challenge to them, assured that they will produce BS-VI fuel compliant vehicles of new models from April 2020. However, they also requested the government to give them some more time to produce existing models, which will be BS-VI emission norms compliant. In addition, they expect the management to ensure that the compliant fuel is till then made available across the country.
Gadkari has sought views of the industry on the scrapping policy that his ministry proposes to introduce soon. While he confirmed this, he also mentioned that there will be no changes in the timeline set by the government for the implementation of BS-VI norms. The minister firmly believes that 'nothing is costlier than anyone's life' and the industry will have to comply with the norms and make safer vehicles by April 2020.
