Tomorrow, March 31, 2020, was initially destined to be the last day for automakers in India to exhaust the stock of their BSIV-compliant (Bharat Stage IV) products. But with the nation under complete lockdown, courtesy of the Covid-19 outbreak, they couldn’t operate until the D-Day. To offer some relief to the automakers, the Supreme Court of India has announced an extension.

The apex court has said that once the lockdown is over, automakers will have a period of ten days to sell BSIV vehicles. In other words, all sold vehicles must get registered within the ten-day window. As things stand, the lockdown’s last date is April 14, 2020. However, that is not applicable in the Delhi/NCR region. Hence, none of the automobile dealers in that region will be able to sell BSIV-ready vehicles from April 1, 2020. Not that air pollution is not a problem in other parts of the country. The issue has been especially problematic in the national capital and its adjoining cities.

Going back to what the Supreme Court of India announced, automakers will be allowed to sell only 10 per cent of unsold BSIV vehicles. For instance, if a carmaker has an inventory of 50,000 BSIV cars, it can sell up to 5,000 of them within the ten-day window. You can say that there’s some relief for the vehicle manufacturers. However, the BSIV inventory includes nearly seven lakh two-wheelers, approximately 12,000 passenger vehicles and around 8,000 commercial vehicles. Just maybe, that 10 per cent cap will hurt.

Earlier this month, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) had approached the apex body to extend the deadline from March 31, 2020, to May 31, 2020. The extension of two months would have helped the automakers better. What’s your take on it?