India keeps its BS-VI date amid lockdown
Times of India, New Delhi   01-Apr-2020

India will keep its date with ultra-clean Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) fuels today (April 1), leapfrogging from BS-IV amidst slump in demand and constraints on movement in the last five weeks due to the spread of coronavirus and the countrywide lockdown.

"The April 1 deadline (for a countrywide switch to BSVI) is intact. The country will switch over to BS-VI petrol and diesel. In fact, we started selling these fuels across the country about 10-12 days ago," Sanjiv Singh. chairman of India's largest fuel retailer IndianOil, told TOI.

"We are running our refineries and other operations to ensure the country leapfrogs to BS-VI as planned. This shows the strength of India's oil industry," Hindustan Petroleum chairman M K Surana told TOI. Executives of Bharat Petroleum too said all their outlets have become BS-VI compliant. Private marketers too are ready. The staterun companies control 85% of India's fuel retail market, the fastest-growing in the world with 64,625 outlets.

The switchover is a global feat as no other major economy is known to have improved fuel standards two notches up at one go by skipping an intermediary stage. The roadmap was drawn in January 2016, when the Narendra Modi government decided to skip the intermediary BS-V stage in an effort to quickly improve the quality of fuel to reduce vehicular emission.