NEW DELHI: The National Green Tribunal has issued notice to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Heavy Industries, Ministry of power, and Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) seeking reply on implementation of star rating system for all passenger vehicles on the basis of energy efficiency and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission i.e. vehicle’s fuel consumption in litres per 100 km and CO2 emission in gm/km.
The directions were given by the coram of Justice Prakash Shrivastava, Justice Arun Kumar Tyagi, Judicial member and Dr Afroz Ahmad while hearing a plea filed by Dr Sanjay Kulshresthra, a senior consultant Paediatric surgeon and working for NGO “Tsunami On Roads”.
“…prayer has been made based on the plea that vehicular pollution is the most important contributory factor in air pollution and as per the Ministry of Earth Sciences, vehicular pollution is responsible for 40% of such air pollution”, read the order.
According to the plea, no star rating system exists in India even though such a proposal was drafted as early as 2010. As per the proposal, it was supposed to be a voluntary fuel efficiency labelling system and thereafter, 2011 onwards the labelling was supposed to become mandatory.
“The draft notification dated 7th January 2016 issued by the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways inviting objections for amendment of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 and introducing the star rating system for the vehicles”, noted the bench. While emphasising upon the advantages of the star rating system, the petitioner, Dr Sanjay Kulshresthra, supported his argument with instances from developed countries that already have star rating system in place to curb air pollution.
“In most of the developed countries, such star rating system of the vehicles has already been introduced and in some of the developing countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, the star rating system exists,” observed the bench.
The petitioner further stressed upon the need for a star rating system in addition to the already existing Bharat Staging (BS) system with the best category of BS-6 to control the ever-increasing air pollution.
The NGT scheduled the next hearing on January 10, 2025.