Oil PSUs to invest Rs 28750 crore for BS VI Auto Fuels

Nitin Gadkari (Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping), Anant Geete (Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises), Prakash Javadekar (Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change) and Dharmendra Pradhan (Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas) were present at this meeting. “Government has chose to leapfrog from BS-IV to BS-VI directly by April 1, 2020. It is a bold decision and a commitment to the environment”, Gadkari told PTI.

Stating that cars contribute only 2 per cent to the overall pollution, Maruti Suzuki Chairman R C Bhargava said it will be a challenge to upgrade technologies to meet BS VI norms in just four years and prices could go up by anywhere between Rs 20,000 to Rs 2 lakh depending on the vehicles. Other big cities will have BS-IV norms by April 2016 and the entire country is expected to get them by 2017.

Earlier, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had written to the government saying there was a substantial difference in the technologies of BS-VI and BS-V engines. Earlier in the draft notification by the ministry, the date was advanced to April 1, 2021 and now it has been further advanced to April 1, 2020. “Leapfrogging to BS-VI wouldn’t give automakers enough time to validate these technologies, which could have led to major reliability issues in vehicles”, the official had said. It had planned to implement BS-V norms in 2019.

Currently, BS-IV auto fuels are being supplied in whole of northern India covering J&K, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, parts of Rajasthan and western UP. This was in addition to the Rs 35,000 crore invested till then for graduating from BS-III to BS-IV in the Metros and chosen cities and BS-II to BS-III in the rest of the country.

By switching to BS-VI by April 2020, India will adopt the standards now followed by the US, Japan and the European Union. BS-IV fuels contain 50 parts per million (ppm) sulphur, while BS-V and BS-VI grade fuel will have 10 ppm sulphur.