State Transport Commissioner Praveen Gedam confirmed to DNA that no aggregator firm had come forward thus far to apply for the licences.
Over two weeks after the Maharashtra government ratified the State Taxi Service rules on March 4, which mandated that aggregator cab firms like Ola and Uber need licences to operate their businesses, neither of the two firms has applied for the licences. These licences are the first step towards government control over the operations of these cabs, which in turn gives relief to passengers in case of complaints of surge-pricing, illegal strikes and the like.
State Transport Commissioner Praveen Gedam confirmed to DNA that no aggregator firm had come forward thus far to apply for the licences. These licences have been made compulsory by the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill 2016, which was passed by the Rajya Sabha in February this year. It was earlier passed by the Lok Sabha in August last year.
As highlighted by DNA in its March 11 edition, for the moment, there is nothing much the state transport department can do to intervene in the matter of surge prices that aggregator cabs charge. Nor can it do much when drivers’ unions of these aggregator firms that are not recognised call a strike without giving any notice to the firms or the state transport department.
Since the state government has not fixed any fare structure for aggregator cabs, travelling in a cab operated by Ola or Uber is only an agreement between the service-providing firm, the driver and the passenger.
“If the passenger thinks the fares are too high, then he can refuse to travel. There is nothing more that can be done at the moment,” state transport officials had told DNA on the day of a particular strike.
In reply to a query on an impending Ola and Uber strike from Tuesday onwards, Gedam said that as of Monday, no strike notices had been submitted to the transport commissionerate. When asked whether the transport department had the right to intervene to stop the strike and save passengers from hardships, Gedam replied that action can be taken only if there is a specific complaint.
Both Ola and Uber refused to answer queries on the aggregator licences as well as the purported strike by their drivers on Tuesday.
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