Last month, a special bench of the National Green Tribunal made it to the headlines on the day of its inauguration as it ordered a ban on the registration of new diesel vehicles with a displacement of more than 2000cc. The bench even went on to ban vehicles that were more than 10 years of age. The tribunal had ordered the initiation of the aforementioned ban from 23rd June. A week later, the Kerala High Court set a stay on the order for a period of two months.
Now, the state High Court has gone ahead and put an indefinite stay on the ban. Justice P.B. Suresh Kumar announced the extension on the stay while hearing a petition filed by the state run transport corporation KSRTC. The earlier stay order was announced when Nippon Toyota had filed a petition in court claiming that there were illegalities in the NGT’s order.
If the ban by the NGT would have come into effect, it would have affected cities such as Trivandrum, Kothamangalam, Thrissur and Kozhikode. The order on the ban was issued after a petition filed by the Lawyer’s Environmental Awareness Forum (LEAF) regarding Kerala being one of the most polluted cities came up.
The indefinite stay is likely to be a breather for companies such as Toyota and Mercedes-Benz whose products are already suffering the brunt of the ban in the Delhi-NCR region. The Japanese manufacturer was even re-considering its investment plans in the country due to the uncertainty on the issue.