New Delhi: Owners of newer vehicles that conform to Bharat Stage – VI (BS-VI) norms may no longer have to get their Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates renewed every year.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has proposed a complete overhaul of the validity and renewal schedule for PUC certificates in a draft notification.
While owners of BS-VI vehicles will get relief, compliance will become stricter for older, more polluting vehicles.
Private BS-VI vehicles that are up to six years old will get a three-year PUC validity, replacing the current one-year validity, under the proposed rules.
Owners of cars purchased after the rollout of BS-VI emission norms in April 2020 could make significantly fewer trips to PUC testing centres during the first six years of ownership, as reported by News18.
Commercial vehicles that are up to six years old and conform to BS-VI standards will receive a two-year PUC certificates validity under the draft proposal.
The aim is to reduce compliance requirements for vehicles that already produce substantially lower emissions.
Things will change as the vehicles get older though.
BS-VI vehicles between 6 and 10 years old will need to renew their PUC certificates once every year, while BS-VI vehicles older than 10 years will require a fresh PUC certificate every six months.
This is based on the premise that emissions can increase as vehicles age, even if they were originally built to cleaner standards.
Under the proposed rules, owners of BS-IV vehicles will have to renew their PUC certificates every six months. They now have to do it once every year.
Owners of BS-I, BS-II and BS-III vehicles will find it much tougher. These vehicles would need to undergo emission testing every three months, reflecting the government’s focus on monitoring vehicles that typically produce higher tailpipe emissions.
Through these changes, the government plans to make the compliance system more risk-based instead of applying the same renewal period to every vehicle.
As the newer BS-VI vehicles are built to much stricter emission standards and generally emit significantly lower levels of pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC) and particulate matter (PM), it is assumed that they will remain that way for three years.
Things change as the vehicles get older. The engines get less efficient and the emissions increase.
The BS emission standards are India’s regulations that limit pollutants released by vehicles. Aligned with European emission norms, they prescribe limits for pollutants including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and particulate matter.
While BS-IV standards were implemented between 2017 and 2020, India skipped BS-V and directly adopted the stricter BS-VI emission norms from April 1, 2020.
BS-VI fuel contains a maximum sulphur content of 10 parts per million (ppm), compared with 50 ppm under BS-IV fuel, making it significantly cleaner and helping vehicles emit lower levels of harmful pollutants.