Delhi Air Pollution An 'Emergency': High Court Asks Centre To Consider Temporary GST Relief On Air Purifiers

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday orally remarked that the authorities must provide exemption from GST on air purifiers, considering the air pollution situation in the national capital as an “emergency.”

A division bench comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela was hearing a PIL to declare air-purifiers as “medical devices” and remove imposition of 18% GST on them.

At the outset, the Court expressed displeasure on the fact that nothing has been done in the matter. It said that every citizen requires fresh air, which the authorities were not able to provide.

“Let the purifiers be provided. That's the minimum you can do. When will you come back?….Even if it is for temporary, give exemption for next one week or one month… consider this an emergency situation, only for temporarily. Take instructions. Tell us now, when is the (GST) Council going to sit and when will you come back with instructions? We will place it before the vacation bench only for compliance. As we speak, we all breathe. You know how many times we breathe in a day, at least 21,000 times a day. Just calculate the harm you are doing to your lungs just by breathing 21,000 times a day, and that's involuntary,” Justice Gedela remarked.

The matter has been adjourned for hearing at 2:30 PM, to enable the counsel appearing for the Union Government to seek instructions.

The plea has been moved by lawyer Kapil Madan. He is represented by Senior Advocate Arvind Nayar. The plea says that air purifiers cannot be treated as luxury but rather are necessity to face extreme air pollution.

Madan contends that air purifiers qualify as medical devices under a notification issued under Section 3(b)(iv) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act as they perform a preventive function by mechanically filtering and removing hazardous particulate matters.

“Therefore air-purifiers squarely fall within the statutory sweep of a medical device, as their intended and primary purpose is the prevention and alleviation of disease-causing exposures and the safeguarding of respiratory health,” the plea states.

He says there exists no rational, scientific, or basis to classify medical devices at the concessional rate of 5% GST while simultaneously taxing air-purifiers at 18%, particularly when the latter performs essential preventive functions during periods of severe air-pollution.

“Accordingly, the 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,” he says in the PIL.

The plea has been filed through Advocates Gurmukh Singh Arora and Rahul Matharu.

Title: Kapil Madan v. Union of India & Ors