Madras High Court orders seizure of all BS-IV vehicles sold and registered fraudulently after Supreme Court deadline
The Hindu
The Madras High Court has directed Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police (DGP) to ensure that not even a single Bharat Stage -IV (BS-IV) motor vehicle that had been fraudulently sold and registered in the State, after the deadline fixed by the Supreme Court, continues to ply on the roads. It has ordered the seizure of all such vehicles.
The Madras High Court has directed Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police (DGP) to ensure that not even a single Bharat Stage -IV (BS-IV) motor vehicle that had been fraudulently sold and registered in the State, after the deadline fixed by the Supreme Court, continues to ply on the roads. It has ordered the seizure of all such vehicles.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh directed the DGP to issue a circular to all police stations in the State with instructions to hand over the seized vehicles that do not comply with the new BS VI emission norms but had been sold and registered fraudulently by misusing backlog entries, to the respective Regional Transport Offices (RTOs).
The judge also directed the High Court Registry to mark a copy of his order to the DGP since the latter was not a party to a writ petition filed by a resident of Namakkal who had approached the court seeking return of a car that was seized from his house by the Kumarapalayam Motor Vehicles Inspector on October 8, 2022.
Additional Advocate General V. Arun told the court that the Supreme Court had fixed March 31, 2020 as the last date for the sale and registration of BS IV vehicles in order to contain air pollution. In violation of the court diktat, more than 290 BS IV vehicles and 25 other vehicles had been registered fraudulently between November 1, 2020 and September 22, 2022.
Therefore, the T.N. Transport Department had undertaken an exercise to identify such vehicles and cancel their registrations. Since the registration of the writ petitioner’s car too had been cancelled by invoking Section 55 of the Motor Vehicles Act of 1988, the AAG vehemently opposed the plea for return of the vehicle.
He said, serious complications would arise if the writ petitioner ends up driving the car on the roads and meets with an accident especially when its registration had been cancelled. The law officer also claimed that the car owners were not cooperating with the Transport Department officials in identifying the sellers of these vehicles.
After recording his submissions, Justice Venkatesh wrote: “The present case involves a huge racket which has cheated people by selling them vehicles which are in the category of BS IV by manipulating records. It is quite obvious that even some of the officials belonging to the RTO are part of the racket.”
While residents are worried over deaths due to diarrhoea in Vijayawada, officials still grapple to find the root cause. Contaminated drinking water supplied by VMC officials is the reason, insist people in the affected areas, but officials insist that efforts are on to identify the disease and that those with symptoms other than diarrhoea too are visiting the health camps.