India, Sept. 4 -- If you're planning to buy a car a couple of years from now, it will have to clear a much tougher safety exam. Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday told the 66th Annual Convention of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) that from October 2027, India's car safety-rating programme, Bharat NCAP, will get a major upgrade - one that looks well beyond how a car crumples in a crash.

The current Bharat NCAP gives cars a star rating (1 to 5) based on crash tests, like global systems such as Euro NCAP. It already rates over 30 models from 11 manufacturers, and it's cheaper for carmakers to test here - about Rs 60 lakh a model versus roughly Rs 2.5 crore abroad.

Bharat NCAP 2.0 wil...