Rapido, Ola, and Uber directed to stop bike taxi services within six weeks

High Court of Karnataka orders Rapido, Ola, and Uber to halt bike taxi services pending government guidelines.

In a major setback for transport technology aggregators, the High Court of Karnataka on Wednesday directed Rapido, Ola, and Uber to stop operating their bike taxi services within six weeks.

The court clarified that unless the State government notifies the relevant guidelines under Section 93 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and the relevant rules framed under this provision, Rapido, Ola, and Uber cannot function as bike taxi aggregators.

The court also said it cannot direct the State government or the Transport Department to register motorcycles as “transport vehicles” and issue them contract carriage permits so that Rapido, Ola, and Uber can operate bike taxi services.

Justice B.M. Shyam Prasad passed the order while disposing of petitions filed by Uber India Systems Pvt. Ltd., Roppen Transportation Services Pvt. Ltd., which operates Rapido services, and ANI Technology Pvt. Ltd, which operates Ola services.

While giving six weeks to the petitioners to withdraw the bike taxi services, the court said the government can take action to ensure that no bike taxi services are offered on the online platform after six weeks. While reading out the operative portion of the judgement, the judge said that copy of the detailed order would be released on April 3.

The court has accepted the government’s contention that the plea for the petitioner to operate bike taxies cannot be considered under the Karnataka On-Demand Transportation Technology Aggregator Rules 2016, which is applicable only to grant licences to run four-wheeler vehicles as taxi service on technology aggregator platforms, and this rule is not applicable to grant licences for operating bike taxi service through platform of the petitioners.

While stating that the Karnataka Electric Bike Taxi Scheme, 2021, was introduced in July 2021 to facilitate environment-friendly, last-mile connectivity solutions and also to ease traffic congestion, the government had told the court that the petitioner-aggregators are at liberty to file applications in the prescribed form before the appropriate authority for grant of licence to operate the electric bike taxis in the urban areas of the State.