State Transport Minister M K Ayappa has now banned all the ride-sharing services of the state. Ride-sharing services like UberPool and OlaShare have now been official called illegal.
The state transport department had earlier issued a 3-day deadline to Uber and Ola asking them to withdraw their ride-sharing services as the ride-sharing services were violating the rules of state government.
The deadline was issued because these cab aggregators collect the fare from the commuters for their ride-sharing services, which is completely against their permit conditions. But, with the 3-day deadline coming to an end yesterday, these ride-sharing services will be illegal from today onwards.
The Minister said “We are not against carpooling by private car-owners as far as it does not involve any money transaction. As far as they don’t break the rules of the state transportation, they can freely run their operations. If any driver is found performing cab sharing operations, he will be strictly punished.”
UberPool and OlaShare were launched in Bangalore in 2015. Over one million users have been registered to UberPool and 25% of Uber users use the ride-sharing service. Bangalore stands in top fifth position in the world which uses Uberpool.
However, Uber Technologies Inc. said that it would not withdraw its ride-sharing services, which was quoted illegal by the Karnataka transport department. The company has launched a public petition to pressurize Transport department withdraw such sanctions.
Christian Freese, general manager, Uber said that “The law permits a contract carriage permit-holder to stop to pick up or set down passengers who are included in the contractual understanding with the driver. UberPOOL fulfills this requirement and we believe that it does not violate the contract carriage permit,”
Similarly, bike taxis launched by Ola and Uber were deemed illegal by the Karnataka government. Both companies withdrew the services within a month of launch in March 2016.
Growing Problems in Uber
The withdrawal of ride-sharing services is likely to impact the businesses of both firms, alongside Delhi and Mumbai. While Ola problems are limited to India Ola valuation Reduced by 40% . Uber is facing some or the other global issues. Recently Uber customers uninstalled the app with #DeleteUber campaign on twitter, the cab service was criticized for very high surge pricing during protest on Immigration ban at JFK airport. Marketing team panicked to see the uninstall rate and later Uber apologized for the same. Uber CEO Travis also quit the Donald Trump economic advisory council after being heavily criticized as Anti Immigrant. Earlier last year Uber sold its china operations to Didi Kaudi as former was not able to compete in Chinese market.
If you’re a frequent user of UberPool and OlaShare in Bangalore, it would be better that you make alternative transportation arrangements that are considered legal by the government. Read Business News.
Recommended for you
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.