What is Bharat Stage – VI?

The Government of India instituted Bharat Stage (BS) emission standards to regulate the vehicular pollutants. The latest BS-VI standards came into effect from 1 April 2020, which would reduce the pollution from vehicles remarkably. The automotive industry has been manufacturing BS-VI compliant vehicles and Oil Marketing Companies started supplying BS-VI compliant fuel. Though the new norms will substantially reduce the air pollution caused by the vehicular exhaust, the manufacturing cost of these vehicles would be a bit higher. However, the increase in price is compensated by the savings by the public on health as the new standards mitigate the air pollution risks considerably.

Bharat Stage standards are based on European (EURO) norms. The acronym BS stands for Bharat Stage, and it is followed by the suffix that indicates the iteration of the standards. The first standards were introduced in 2000, called India 2000 having reference to Euro 1. The second and third iterations, namely BS-II and BS-III were introduced in 2001 and 2005 respectively. And the last phased out BS-IV standards were adopted in 2017.