The Delhi High Court on Wednesday pulled up the Central government over failure by authorities to tackle the air pollution crisis in Delhi [Kapil Madan vs Union of India & Ors].
A Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said that if the authorities cannot provide clean air for citizens to breathe, then the least it can do is to reduce the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on air purifiers which are currently taxed at 18 percent.
The Bench asked the government counsel to take instructions on the same and report back to the Court at 2.30 pm today.
"This is the minimum that you can do. Every citizen requires fresh air. If you can't do it, minimum you can do is reduce GST. Give an exemption for 15 days on a temporary basis. Treat this situation as an emergency. Take instructions and tell us now. Tell us now when will you come back with instruction. We will place it during vacation but only for compliance. How many times do you breath in a day? 21,000 times. Just calculate the harm you are doing to yourself. We want instructions at 2:30. We will keep it for compliance during vacations," the Court remarked.
The Court was hearing a plea seeking directions to categorise air-purifiers as 'medical device' and slash the Goods and Services Tax (GST) levied on them from 18 to 5 percent
As per the petition filed by advocate Kapil Madan, air-purifiers cannot be treated as luxury considering the “extreme emergency crisis” caused by dire air pollution in Delhi.
“The imposition of GST at the highest slab upon air-purifiers a device that has become indispensable for securing minimally safe indoor air renders such equipment financially inaccessible to large segments of the population and thereby inflicts an arbitrary, unreasonable, and constitutionally impermissible burden,” Madan contended.
According to the petition, air-purifier satisfies the criteria of a 'medical device' under a 2020 notification issued by the Centre.
“Air-purifiers perform a critical medical-device function by enabling safe respiration and mitigating life-threatening exposures, placing them squarely within the preventive and physiological-support purposes,” the petition said.
Thus, levying 18 percent GST on the same is arbitrary, unreasonable and disproportionate, it was .
According to the petition,
“Continued imposition of 18% GST on air-purifiers, despite their medically recognised role in crisis situations and their functional equivalence to devices taxed at 5%, constitutes an arbitrary and unreasonable fiscal classification. Such differential treatment fails the constitutional test of intelligible differentia and bears no rational nexus to public-health objectives, thereby warranting judicial intervention.”
The petition was filed through advocates Gurmukh Singh Arora and Rahul Matharu.