Plea in Delhi HC challenges 'Lead Stabilizer in Polyvinyl Chloride Pipes and Fittings Rules, 2021'

New Delhi [India], December 25 (ANI): A Petition has been moved in Delhi High Court seeking direction to quash the Rule 2 (2) of the 'Lead Stabilizer in Polyvinyl Chloride Pipes and Fittings Rules, 2021' enacted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change through a notification on March 30, 2021.
The Petitioner, PVC Pipe Manufacturers (Haryana) Association challenging legality, validity and proprietary of the "Lead Stabilizer in Polyvinyl Chloride Pipes and Fittings Rules, 2021" to the extent it mandates obtaining a licence from Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for manufacturing "PVC" pipes and to mark the BIS 'Standard Mark' on all the PVC pipes.
Petitioner association through Advocates Animesh Kumar, Nishant Kumar, Utkarsh Sharma, and Shweta Singh submitted that the said Impugned Rules, Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) illegally and arbitrarily made it mandatory for the manufacturers of PVC pipes to obtain a licence from BIS and to mark the BIS 'Standard Mark' on all the PVC pipes.
The petition will come for hearing before the bench headed by Chief Justice DN Patel, in January first week.
The plea stated that there are several PVC products that are required for plumbing work but are not covered under any of the BIS's standards. Such non-standard items do not have any replacement. Therefore, the complete construction sector will come to standstill if only the products with ISI Standard marking are allowed to be produced.
In order to obtain BIS Certification, the PVC pipe manufacturers are not only required to comply with the prescribed lead standards, but also with certain other standards which are mandatory to ensure the quality of the product required to use the Indian Standards Institutes ("ISI") mark which is not at all related to the lead content in the product.
In doing so, the PVC pipes manufacturers are required to produce ISI grade pipes which can only be done by upgrading their plants and machinery for which the manufacturing units would need a massive capital investment worth crore of rupees.
As such, in order to obtain a BIS license, the PVC manufactures are required to have a lab, infrastructure as well as additional working personnel, plea further read. (ANI)