PIL before Delhi High Court to declare air purifier as 'medical device', bring down its GST from 18% to 5%

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition has been filed before the Delhi High Court seeking directions to the Central government to declare that air-purifiers fall within the category of 'medical device' under Medical Devices Rules 2017 thereby, bringing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) levied on it from 18 to 5 percent [Kapil Madan vs Union of India & Ors].

Air purifiers are currently taxed at 18 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 has contended.

The matter will be heard by a Division Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela on Wednesday.

As per the petitioner, 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 states.

Thus, levying 18 percent GST on the same is arbitrary, unreasonable and disproportionate, it has been contended.

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.