Nearly a month has passed since the Maharashtra and Gujarat governments had been instructed to set up Special Investigation Teams (SITs) to probe the violation of testing norms by General Motors. Not having gotten any response, the Centre is set to send ‘reminders’ to the governments regarding the same.
On July 24, General Motors had announced the recall of over 1.14lakh Chevrolet Taveras manufactured between 2005 and 2013 to address "emission and specification issues". However, in a letter to the government on July 18, GM had admitted to compliance failures where some employees had been presenting fine-tuned engines with lower emission to pass the inspection. When the company had realized that the engines wouldn’t satisfy the norms, pre-selected engines were fitted to vehicles that were to be tested by the government. GM globally is said to have dismissed at least 25 employees in direct connection with this issue.
Previously, Nitin Gokarn, chief executive, National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project (NATRiP), heading a three-member panel, had probed the issue to see if there was an act of criminality and then decide the penalty. But the panel did not have the power to initiate a criminal investigation. But once set up, the state governments’ SIT will be able take action under provisions of Indian Penal Code (IPC). Once convicted, GM India might have to face a penalty of up to Rs 11 crore under the Central Motor Vehicle Rules for manipulation of emissions data.
The three-member committee headed by Gokarn had recommended tightening of regulatory norms to prevent recurrence of such incidents. Currently the date of taking samples for testing is decided mutually by the testing agency and the manufacturer.
Source : Economic Times
