Bike taxis not banned by Karnataka HC, but likely to leave Bengaluru streets. Here’s why

What is the rationale behind the HC’s order? Have bike taxis run into similar issues in other states?

Operating in a grey area

Rapido began offering bike taxi services in Karnataka in around 2016, capitalising on the demand for affordable and quick transport. From the very outset, however, these ran afoul of the state Transport Department which says that two-wheelers with white number plates (meant for private vehicles) cannot be used for commercial purposes under the Karnataka Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989.

Prodded by powerful auto and cab unions, the government has cracked down on bike taxi operations a number of times. More than 200 bikes were seized in February 2019, and 120 more bikes were seized in January 2022. In 2019, the government announced a six-month suspension against Ola for operating bike services, although this was revoked two days later.

The introduction of the Karnataka Electric Bike Taxi scheme in 2021 paved the way for some regularisation (restricted only to EVs). But this too was revoked by a 2024 order by the government, which said that e-bike services violated the Motor Vehicles Act and were unsafe for women.

Bike taxi services in Karnataka have been operating till now on the strength of the 2022 interim order of the Karnataka HC, which stopped the government from taking any coercive action against bike taxis until further directions.

Karnataka HC’s decision

The interim order was passed in a matter brought to the HC through a number of petitions by Uber, ANI Technologies (the holding company of Ola), and Roppen Transportation (the holding company of Rapido). The court finally ruled on this case on April 2.

At the heart of the above-mentioned companies’ petitions before the Karnataka HC was a plea to permit the registration of two wheelers as “transport vehicles”. The court observed that this was not prohibited under the MVA, which allows two-wheelers to be granted permits to operate as “contract carriages”.

However, the HC noted that the Supreme Court’s 2023 order in Roppen Transportation Services Private Limited v Union of India and Ors, which dealt with the functioning of two-wheelers as bike taxis in Maharashtra, said that “the ultimate decision on whether to grant a license to an aggregator… is within the domain of the concerned State Governments.”

The Karnataka HC thus said that the state government will have to “frame Guidelines under Section 93 and Rules under Section 96 of the MV Act” without which aggregators could not operate bike taxi services. Notably, it said that the court itself could not issue directions to the Transport Department to register motorcycles as commercial vehicles.

Section 93(1)(iii) of the MVA states that aggregators cannot operate without a license subject to the conditions prescribed by the state government, while Section 96 deals with the power of the state government to make rules under the MVA.

The HC’s decision effectively puts the ball in the state government’s court. The decision to allow — or not allow bike taxis — will ultimately be a political one, in which the Karnataka government will have to balance the demands of auto and cab unions with those of consumers.

At the moment, only Maharashtra and Delhi have specific regulations for bike taxis, although the one in Maharashtra is yet to come into effect.