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NEW DELHI: Toyota on Wednesday announced a global recall of nearly 64 lakh vehicles — amongst its largest ever — to fix a defect that may de-activate an airbag in vehicles manufactured between February 2005 and December, 2008. The faulty units include nearly 45,000 Innovas in India.

The massive global recall is the largest announced on a single day by the Japanese major since October, 2012 when it had called back 74 lakh units of the Yaris, Corolla and other models to fix faulty power window switches.

Coming after Maruti's decision to call back over 1 lakh units of Swift, Dzire and Ertiga, nearly 1.5 lakh car units have been called back in India in the last two days to fix defects.

Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM), the Japanese giant's Indian arm, said the "special service campaign" has been launched due to an error in the spiral cable mounted on the steering wheel. "This will lead to continuous illumination of an airbag warning lamp on the instrument cluster giving prior indication of a problem to the customer. In addition, the driver's airbag may get deactivated," the company said.

TKM said it was working on obtaining the necessary replacement parts. "Once these parts are available, customers will be contacted by the authorized dealers. The vehicle will be repaired free of cost." The repairs are expected to be carried out in approximately one hour.

Strict monitoring and subsequent action by regulators in the West is prompting companies like Toyota, Honda and General Motors to conduct large-scale recalls. Toyota was forced to call back more than 90 lakh vehicles in the last few years to address an accelerator problem that was connected with fatal accidents in the US. The issue had even forced Toyota president Akio Toyoda to testify in US Congress, and resulted in a record $1.2 billion settlement agreed only last month even as private lawsuits are still pending.

Toyota's latest global recall comes in as rival GM is also under investigation in the US for failing for years to act on a known ignition switch defect linked to a dozen deaths. GM has recalled 16 lakh vehicles over the issue.

While car recalls in the West are regulated and can attract severe penalties if companies are found lacking, they are yet to be made mandatory in India. The government has now been looking into the issue after GM India last year admitted to problems with the emission in its Tavera MPV that led to the recall of over 1 lakh units. An official committee accused GM of committing a "corporate fraud", prompting the Centre to initiate steps to make recall announcements mandatory.

Companies are generally reluctant to call back cars in India as they fear that the move will attract negative publicity.