Ola, Uber may book ride to court over ban on bike service in Delhi

Ride hailing aggregators, and the bike taxi drivers enrolled with them, are planning to go to court within a week for a stay on the Delhi government’s recent order banning their services.

Uber, Ola and Rapido are among the big names who offer the service. There are over 120,000 drivers in the capital who provide the service and undertake as many as 3 million to 4 million rides a week, making it the largest market in the country for the service.

The Delhi government banned the service on the grounds that while the bike taxi drivers have private registration numbers, they are carrying passengers on hire which is a commercial operation and, as such, violates the Motor Vehicles Act.

The plan to go to court stems from the breakdown of talks between the drivers and aggregators, and the Delhi government.

A senior executive with one of the aggregators lamented the government’s alleged inflexibility. “Surprisingly, the government has said that the new guidelines for aggregators will not come soon but in 3-4 months or later. So that adds to the uncertainty. It leaves drivers and us with no choice but to go to court.”

The operators had made two suggestions to break the impasse. One was offering to convert the bikes into electric bikes as long as they had enough time to do so. The other, was ensuring a level playing field for all commercial two wheeler riders, including those who deliver for e- commerce platforms.

The executive said that the operators appealed for operations to not to be stopped because of the negative impact this would have on the riders’ livelihoods, especially if no business model for converting them to electric bikes was in place.

The ride hailing aggregators argue that the central guidelines of 2020, which all states have to follow, allowed privately registered bikes to provide commercial services on condition that they were part of a fleet of an aggregator service.

They contend, further, that Delhi’s rules reflect a bias against bike taxi services, while displaying tolerance for the same bikes being used for commercial services for delivery companies.

As an example of this ‘bias’, the aggregators point out that Delhi’s draft policy to regulate aggregators says that any new bike being boarded as part of a bike taxi fleet once the policy comes into effect, has to be electric. Further, 100 per cent of the bike fleet has to be converted into electric in two years.  

Yet for bikes providing delivery for e-commerce companies, the provision is less strict. The entire fleet has been given a longer rope, time till 1 April, 2030, to convert to electric and only 25 per cent of new bikes being boarded in the new fleet need to be electric in the first nine months.