Court grants no interim relief to Uber

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday refused to grant any interim relief to app-based cab company Uber on its plea challenging rejection of application for licence to operate in the national capital, saying that it was not supposed to ply if it did not have any permit.

Justice Mukta Gupta issued notice to the Delhi government and city police and sought their response by July 8 on Uber India Technology’s plea that a June 3 order rejecting its licence application be quashed.

The Delhi government had cancelled the licence application of Uber for not complying with the provisions of the recently amended Radio Taxi Scheme of 2006. The amendment was introduced after app-based cab companies were banned in the capital following an Uber cab driver allegedly raping a finance executive in December last year. The modified scheme imposes various mandatory requirements, including having prefixed calibrated metres, a GPS device and running on CNG, on the companies for grant of licence. Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for Uber, said its case was similar to that of two other companies, Apra Cabs India and Serendipity Infolabs (Taxi for Sure), whose applications for licence was rejected by the Delhi government on June 3.

He sought parity with them as another bench of the high court had quashed the rejection of licence application of the two companies and had also held the coercive action taken against them as invalid. Though the court refused to pass any interim order till it gets the replies of the government and police, it listed the matter for July 8 after counsel for Uber sought that the matter be given an early date.