EPCA's rise to prominence

EPCA was constituted with objective of protecting and improving quality of the environment

Two events that severely impacted the fortunes of the domestic automobile industry have hit the headlines. The first of these was an eight-month-long ban on sales of 2,000cc diesel personal vehicles in the National Capital Region in December 2015. The second, also a result of a Supreme Court order, came on Wednesday by way of a ban on sales of vehicles not conforming to BS-III emission norms from April 1.
 
The common link between these two cases is the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, also known as the EPCA, a statutory body constituted by the central government in 1998 at the behest of the Supreme Court. One of the initial and significant achievements of this authority was introducing compressed natural gas as a fuel for vehicles in Delhi after an order of the Supreme Court. This was aimed to address pollution problems. But that is not surprising as the EPCA was constituted with the objective of ‘protecting and improving’ the quality of the environment and ‘controlling environmental pollution’ in the National Capital Region. The EPCA also assists the apex court in various environment-related matters in the region.

 
Accordingly, the constitution of this body is also largely regional. Besides the chairman, the EPCA has 14 members, some of whom are the environment secretary of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT), chairperson of the New Delhi Municipal Council, transport commissioner of the NCT, the commissioners of various municipal corporations of Delhi and professors at IIT Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University. Former IAS officer Bhure Lal, EPCA chairperson, has been heading it for almost two decades now. The authority does not have a dedicated office and functions from the Central Pollution Control Board office in East Delhi with secretarial help from the Board. But the stature of the EPCA has been growing. The authority had been instrumental in the December 2015 order, by which the Supreme Court banned sales of diesel cars in the NCR. A new and successful chapter has been added to this authority, which in effect expands its scope and makes it national. The Supreme Court's Wednesday order came after the EPCA dragged the automobile industry to court, seeing its unwillingness to implement BS-IV norms ahead of the designated time.

 
EPCA, since September 2016 had been harping that no sales and registration of BS-III vehicles should continue after April 1, 2017. The industry, however, maintained that only manufacturing needed to shift to BS-IV from April while sales and registrations of vehicles manufactured till March 31 could continue. The government notification on BS-IV had stated that manufacturers should comply with BS-IV norms from April 1, 2017, but was silent on the fate of vehicles manufactured before March 31 as far as sales and registration were concerned.