Delhi Govt Legalises Bike Taxi Under Draft Cab Aggregator Rule

The transport department of Delhi government has legalised bike taxi aggregators including Ola, Uber and Rapido which were earlier banned by the department under ‘Draft Delhi Motor Vehicle Aggregator and Delivery Services Provider Scheme’ published on Wednesday (May 24).

However, all bike taxis and two-wheeler renting services shall only be permissible via electric two-wheelers under the new policy.

“The Aggregator shall be allowed to operate bike taxi (two-wheeler taxi) services, provided that any vehicle being on-boarded as part of the fleet by from the date of commencement of this scheme shall be Electric Vehicles only,” the draft said.

“In such cases the driver of a two-wheeler taxi would be required to have compliance as mandated for passenger service vehicle drivers in Central Motor Vehicles Act (CMVA), Central Motor Vehicles Rules (CMVR), & Delhi Motor Vehicles Rules (DMVR),” it added.

Further, this draft promotes the use of electric vehicles (EVs) and a phase-wise transition to EVs by 2030.

“The aggregator shall switch to an all-electric fleet by April 1, 2030. The existing conventional vehicles (Petrol/CNG/Diesel propelled) on-boarded by the Aggregator shall be liable for penalty,” the draft added.

For two and three wheelers, the government has provided a target timeline of four years from the date of notification for 100% EV adoption. However, the target timeline has been set at five years for the four-wheelers.

Earlier, a group of tech companies and startups, listed down issues with certain proposals in the draft. In its submission to the Delhi government, IndiaTech, an industry body representing companies such as Ola, Zomato and Zepto, said that the provisions of the draft aggregator policy could impact the 11 Mn gig workers in the Delhi-NCR region.

The industry body said that the policy has the potential to create a demand-supply disparity given that the EV supply infrastructure is still nascent in Delhi.

The schemes also focus on the public safety of passengers including setting up of command control centres by aggregators with accessible data such as origin, destination and route of trip, along with mandatory panic buttons, integration with emergency response number 112.

“The aggregator shall establish an operating centre/command and control Centre (CCC) or information centre in NCR of Delhi, which shall remain functional at all times (24×7). The operating centre/CCC should be able to track and monitor the movements of all the
drivers and their vehicles on a real time basis,” it said.

The transport department has put up the proposed policy on its website for public feedback for 30 days. The final policy will be notified after deliberating public feedback.