Bengaluru: The state government on Wednesday submitted before the high court that it will not enforce its newly introduced Karnataka on Demand Transportation Technology/ Aggregators Rules 2016 until June 20.
The state government had introduced the new rules, for ensuring the safety of passengers who use taxi services through On-Demand Transport Technology platforms. The court was hearing a petition challenging the new rules on various grounds including that the state has erroneously implemented the rules under the Section 93 of the Motor Vehicle Act.
However while adjourning the matter to June 20 after the state assured that the rules will not be enforced till then, the court made it clear that the authorities can take action against taxi aggregators and similar such service providers if they are found collecting surge-price from customers.
The petitioner stated in its plea that ODTTP service providers would rather fall squarely within the purview of Information Technology Act. Taxi aggregators had been opposing the decision to bring them under the section for quite some time citing that they were not the owners of the cabs and could not be held accountable for any incidents involving the vehicles.
Licence to Ola
Cab aggregator Ola has furnished all the documents to the RTO for seeking licence under the Transportation Technology Aggregators Act, 2016. The RTO has verified the documents and licence will be issued in a few days. But other cab aggregators, like Uber, TaxiForSure are yet to furnish the documents. H.G. Kumar, additional commissioner, transport department, said, “The RTO has verified all the 100 vehicles of Ola and they comply with the guidelines. All other documents too were in accordance with the Act. We have stopped seizure of vehicles.”
