With the Supreme Court ordering ban on sale of Bharat Stage (BS)- III vehicles, the two-wheeler vendors here are offering big discounts to clear inventory of scooters and motorcycles having BS III emission norms. From April 01, vehicles with BS IV emission norms only would be sold due to which all vehicles with old emission norms would become obsolete. Stung by the SC directive all automobile companies offered huge discounts to the customers on two and three wheelers till March 31.
The car manufacturing companies had already graduated to the BS IV norms. Two wheeler manufacturing company Honda led others in offering attractive discounts. Its discount ranged from `13,500 to `20,000. Similarly Hero Moto crop offered discounts in the range of `3,000 to `12,500. In Dehradun, the inventories of popular brands like Activa and Aviator were exhausted by Thursday evening. Manager of the Essell Honda showroom located at Rajpur road here informed that discounts were so lucrative that large number of customers descended in the showrooms of the company on the day. The Manager of the Mayur Automobile, Ajay Garg said that all vehicles of BS III norms were sold out from the dealership on the day. He informed that some vehicles though are remaining in sub dealership.
The Mashelkar committee report for the auto-fuel policy paved the way for an emission regime for vehicles in India. The harmful emissions, which are identified for regulations in different Bharat Stages are carbon monoxide (CO), unburnt hydrocarbons (HC) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx). The vehicles need to conform to the emission norms and higher limit of every emission is fixed at every stage. The vehicles with BS- IV would emit less harmful emission than those conforming BS III norms. The Government had given a deadline to all vehicle manufacturing companies that only vehicles conforming BS- IV norms would be sold after April 01. In a hope of getting reprieve on the deadline many vehicle manufactures hired best counsels of the country and moved to the court.
However their effort proved futile as SC refused to grant any relief.
