India will skip BS-V emission norms, adopt BS-VI in 2020

The Government of India has announced that it has decided to skip BS-V emission norms altogether and implement BS-VI emission norms by April 1, 2020 for four-wheelers.

The government's initial plan was to implement BS-VI norms in 2024, which was advanced to 2021. It had planned to implement BS-V norms in 2019. The government claims that the step to leapfrog BS-V norms has been taken as a measure to reduce the air pollution in the country.

At present, BS-IV norms have been implemented in major cities and BS-III norms in rest of the country. Other big cities will have BS-IV norms by April 2016 and the entire country is expected to get them by 2017.

Upgrading to BS-VI will mean that automobile manufacturers and oil refineries will have to make heavy investments. Prices of cars are likely to rise as well. However, India's emission norms are many years behind developed countries, and the jump will enable it to close the gap considerably. 

Source: Economic Times