Three more cities are switching over to Bharat Stage (BS)-4 emission norms from Thursday. These cities are Ankaleshwar in Gujarat, Hisar in Haryana and Bharatpur in Rajasthan.
Already 13 cities, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Kanpur, Agra, Lucknow and Solapur are implementing the BS-4 emission norms from 2010 when the national auto fuel policy was announced.
These cities, auto experts point out, comprise 40 per cent of the domestic car market.
The ministry of petroleum is confident that the BS-4 emission norms will extend to 50 cities by 2015.
But automobile experts are wondering why cities such as Bharatpur and Hisar were selected over more densely automobile populated cities.
Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers director-general Vishnu Mathur pointed out, “The only explanation for their selection seems to be that they are located close to oil-providing refineries.”
But he, along with other automobile organisations, is strongly opposed to the present policy of piece meal inclusion of cities. “We need to have a uniform policy across the entire country. Unless that happens, trucks (which are some of the main pollutants) plying across state borders will continue to use Bharat 3. More and more cars in cities are switching over to CNG but the main pollutants will continue to go unchecked.”
Anumita Roy Chowdhury of CSE also expressed disappointment at the pace of reforms. “BS-4 emission norms are seven years behind Euro-5 implemented across Europe while BS-3 emission norms remain 12 years behind Euro-4. We need a single fuel standard across the country in order to take advantage of the new vehicle technology,” she said.