While many counterparts are still working on scaling their speed to make their products BSIII compliant, Bajaj Auto is already sitting comfortably with its vehicles BSIII compliant. The rest of the country will upgrade to BSIII effective April 1 as the 13 major cities will upgrade to BSIV on the same date.

The company officials attribute most of the credit to the efficiency of the R&D team to make the products BSIII compliant way before the deadline.

However, there are speculations that the government may push the deadline forward by 2-3 months due to shortage of fuel by the oil companies. The oil companies have filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court lack of BSIV and BSIII compliant fuel in the respective areas.

But whatever be the case, Bajaj has made sure that the company is future-ready with its products. According to the BSIII norms for two-wheelers in the country, emission of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons plus oxides of nitrogen necessarily need to be brought down from 1.50 (g/km) to 1.0 (g/km) from April 2010. The new norms are coming into play as per the recommendations of the Mashelkar committee for the control of pollution.