The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed the Goods and Services Tax Council to convene an urgent meeting and consider lowering the levies on air purifiers in view of the high levels of pollution in the national capital and surrounding areas, reported Bar and Bench.
The council should consider slashing the tax on the machines from the current figure of 18% to 5%, a division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said.
The court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Kapil Madan seeking directions to categorise air purifiers as a “medical device” and lower the GST levy on them.
Madan told the bench that air purifiers cannot be treated as a luxury and should instead be looked at as a necessity to face extreme air pollution, Live Law reported.
Air purifiers qualify as medical devices under Section 3(b)(iv) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act because they perform a preventive function by mechanically filtering and removing hazardous particulate matter, he added.
Madan said that continuing to impose 18% GST on air purifiers, despite their medically recognised role in a crisis and their functional equivalence to devices taxed at 5%, constitutes an “arbitrary and unreasonable fiscal classification”.
Earlier in the day, the High Court on Wednesday criticised the Union government for its failure to tackle air pollution in the national capital, saying that the least it could do was to reduce the GST on air purifiers during such an “emergency”, Bar and Bench reported.
“How many times do you breathe in a day?” the bench was quoted as saying. “21,000 times. Just calculate the harm you are doing to yourself.”
As the bench reconvened after lunch, it noted that the parliamentary standing committee in December recommended that the government should either lower or abolish taxes on air purifiers and filters used in them, reported Bar and Bench.
“We are informed that GST council is a pan-India body and convening a meeting may take some time,” said the court. “However, considering the air quality situation in Delhi and nearby areas, we find it appropriate for the GST council to meet at the earliest.”
The court listed the matter for December 26.
AQI in Delhi
Delhi’s air quality on Wednesday marginally improved to the “poor” category, according to data from the Sameer application at 3.05 pm.
The national capital’s average AQI stood at 283, showed the application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board. Twenty of the city’s 39 active monitoring stations recording Air Quality Index readings above 300.
An index value between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air. Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.
An AQI in the “severe” and “severe plus” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.
The air quality in the national capital had worsened to the “severe plus” category between December 13 and December 15, but had improved marginally to the “very poor” category till Monday.
However, the average AQI in Delhi worsened to 412 on Tuesday.
Delhi and the National Capital Region are under Stage 4 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan to curb pollution. The restrictions came into force on December 13 after the air quality slipped into the “severe plus” category.
GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region.
Also read: How Delhi’s rich are escaping air pollution
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