Following a great tumult, the Govt. has finally banned the selling of BS III complaint automobiles completely from the face of the auto sector. The vehicles based on BS III norms, even if present with the dealers, shall not be sold out from now on. Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum and Natural Gas, formally launched BS-IV grade transportation fuels in Bhubaneswar, Odisha on 1st April'17. While fuel pumps in most of the Indian cities and all metros already sell BS-IV grade to the customers, the ministry has made it available in smaller towns and cities as well like - Varanasi, Durgapur, Gorakhpur, Imphal, Ranchi, Madurai, Nagpur, Guwahati and Shillong among others. He also made a statement that he stands with the Prime Minister of our country on his commitment made at COP-21 in Paris that India will substantially reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. The oil companies will make an expenditure of 90,000 crore rupees on phase-wise upgradations of fuel quality across the fuel stations around the country. A lot of tumults followed the roll out of the decision when it was in a pending state. The automobile manufacturers made a constant plea to the SC not to halt the sales of the vehicles based on BS III norms as it will cause a heavy loss to them and the dealers who have received the vehicles at their dealerships already. But the SC seemed constant on its decision, and the result is the application of the norms from today onwards. Soon, in 2020 the country plans to skip BS V and directly jump to the BS VI applicable vehicles seeing the trends of the other countries.
Also, the fuel prices have dropped down./ The petrol prices have dropped by Rs. 3.77 rupees/liter and diesel prices are slashed by 2.91 rupees/liter.
