Bharat NCAP Has Now Rated 35 Cars With Five Stars

Bharat NCAP, India's home-grown crash-test programme, has awarded a five-star adult occupant protection rating to 35 vehicle ratings covering 34 models from 12 manufacturers since its launch in December 2023. The most recent entrant is the Mahindra XUV 7XO, which was tested in July and had its result published on 15 September 2026.

The programme, overseen by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, began with the Tata Safari and Harrier, which shared India's first five-star certification. Tata Motors has since extended its lead with eleven five-star nameplates, including the Nexon, Curvv, Punch and their electric counterparts. Mahindra follows with six, among them the Thar Roxx, XUV 3XO and the INGLO-based BE 6 and XEV 9e. Maruti Suzuki, a late entrant to voluntary testing, has notched up five five-star cars in just over a year, starting with the Dzire sedan in June 2025 and most recently the facelifted Brezza.

Only the Mahindra XEV 9e and Tata Harrier.ev have achieved a perfect adult occupant score of 32 out of 32. Among combustion-engine cars, the Kia Seltos leads with 31.70. For child occupant protection, the VinFast VF7 holds the highest score recorded so far, at 45.25 out of 49.

Two cars stand apart for a different reason: the Citroen Aircross (in its five-seat configuration) and the third-generation Honda Amaze scored five stars for adult protection but only four for child protection, falling just short of the 41-point cut-off. It is a reminder that a headline star rating can mask uneven performance across categories, and that buyers comparing cars on safety should look at both scores rather than the overall rating alone.

The expanding list reflects a broader shift in how safety is marketed and bought in India. Where airbag count and ground clearance once dominated showroom conversations, star ratings are increasingly used by manufacturers as a point of differentiation, particularly as compact SUVs and electric vehicles compete for the same urban, safety-conscious buyer. Several ratings in the list, including the Innova Hycross and Invicto twins and the Duster-based Nissan Tekton, show how platform-sharing is letting companies extend crash-test credentials across badge-engineered models without separate testing.

The programme itself is due for an overhaul. The transport ministry's draft AIS-197 framework, flagged by Union minister Nitin Gadkari at the SIAM Annual Convention in September, proposes a tougher 100-point assessment from October 2027, covering pedestrian protection and crash-avoidance technology alongside the existing occupant tests. Current ratings run until September 2027, after which cars may need to be re-evaluated against the stiffer benchmark — meaning today's five-star cars are not guaranteed to keep that status under the revised rules.

Bharat NCAP Five-Star Rated Cars (as of October 2026)