Treat plea against Uber as representation: HC to Delhi govt

Delhi High Court today asked the city government to treat as a representation a PIL seeking suspension of licence of all web-based cab operators, including Uber India, till they adhere to safety norms like embedding GPS in their taxis running in the national capital.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath asked the Delhi government to take a decision within a week of receiving the representation and disposed of the plea.
The PIL contended the government was not implementing its Radio Taxi Scheme of 2006, which was modified in December last year, as well as the recent City Taxi Scheme brought out last month, both of which prescribed various safety norms that cab operators have to comply with.

Under these schemes, apart from the requirement of embedded GPS systems in their cabs, the web-based taxi operators also need to keep on record numbers of their drivers and adhere to other safety norms.
The petitioner, a 25-year-old woman, has claimed she had travelled by a Uber cab on July 30 this year and during the trip her phone had died.
When her family could not get in touch with her, they tried to contact Uber, but were unable to do so as the company website did not show any emergency phone numbers, her petition, filed through advocates Jai Dehadrai and Saurabh Malhotra, claimed.

"There was also no panic button in the cab, and upon asking the taxi driver, she was informed that Uber does not require its drivers to install embedded GPS transponders which continuously beam real-time location details to a centralised control room," the petition said.
"Upon further enquiry she realised that no web-based cab operator in the National Capital Region was adhering to any of the most basic safety rules/laws - thus jeopardising the safety of lakhs of users everyday, especially women," it added.