Back In Play: Government To Grant Licence To Taxi Aggregators

Delhi Government has agreed to grant Radio Taxi Licence to taxi aggregators such as Uber and Ola, given that  they comply by the rules framed for radio taxi operators. This agreement  will establish a level playing field for both services. Officials said, Even though these apps are labelled as  transport aggregators, road ministry wants them  to function according to the rule framework of any other cab operator, under Motor Vehicles Act.

“Fresh license applications will be considered after they furnish affidavits”, says Gopal Rai, Transport and Rural Development Minister

Ministry also added that complying to the standard and stringent safety norms, particularly for women passengers is a must for Taxi Aggregators  if they want to restart their operations in the city.

The whole procedure will include  establishing call centres and permanent GPS in cars as opposed to the presence of GPS tracking through mobile phone device. The government is also evaluating whether to limit the maximum price  and minimum price charged by the aggregators, as these taxi apps get an upper hand by offering cheaper fares and free rides as compared to the radio taxis, which are bound to charge a minimum floor price.

Legalisation of Taxi Hailing apps has been a topic of constant debate since the Delhi Government’s ban on Uber after the horrific Delhi rape incident. Following which, Ola stopped operations in Delhi for a month but resumed services in January after applying for a radio-taxi licence while other aggregators continued operations. Government even passed an order to Department of Electronics and Information technology(DEITY) to ban these apps but to the cabs’ relief , Internet Service Providers (ISPs) expressed inablility to comply with its directive URLs of four websites including Uber, Olacabs, TaxiForSure and Angel Broking.