In a relief to automobile dealers in the country, the Supreme Court relaxed the March 31 deadline to sell off and register vehicles which comply with BS-IV emission norms. The court then gave them 10 days after the end of the lockdown to liquidate 10% of the unsold stock they have of the BS-IV compliant vehicles, two, three and four wheelers, reported Mint.
The appeal before the apex court had been filed by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), saying their dealer-members had been left with an inventory valued at over Rs 7,000 crore.
A two-judge bench of Justices Aurn Mishra and Deepak Gupta allowed this concession. It may be relevant to note that a similar petition was filed by FADA in February but at the time, the Supreme Court rejected their appeal.
This 10-day extension after the lockdown is lifted may hardly be adequate for the automobile dealers to sell the vehicles in their inventory. The time for registration of the BS-IV vehicles is also 10 days from the date of sale. If the vehicle has been sold before March 31, then its registration will be allowed at a later date. These measures have been put in place in view of the lockdown and the disruption caused due to it. The Supreme Court, in its latest order also has kept Delhi and NCR out of this 10-day extension.
FADA had sought an extension of 2 months.
It is based on the orders of the Supreme Court that the automobile manufacturers stopped production of BS-IV vehicles and made modifications to start making BS-VI vehicles. The sale and registration of BS-IV vehicles will come to an end on March 31. In the normal course the dealers might have been able to sell off the old stock. The sale of BS-VI vehicles has already started. The continued slowdown in the economy meant that the automobile sales kept dropping quarter after quarter.