Karnataka moves Supreme Court challenging high court order allowing bike taxis

On January 28, the high court bench led by Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru held that bike taxis are a legal means of transportation and directed the state government to issue permits for their operation as contract carriages with yellow-coloured number plates. The decision had brought relief to around 6 lakh bike-taxi riders and aggregators who had stopped operations since April 2025.

The high court held that plying taxis is a legitimate business and that such activity is protected under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, which gives the right to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business.

It had declared that the bike-taxi business was not inherently dangerous, illegal or immoral.

What was the case?

In 2019, taxi-aggregator companies like Uber India, Rapido, and Ola began facing issues operating bike taxis on their platforms, with the state government rejecting licences or refusing to renew them in some cases. Following this, the companies with licences under the Karnataka On-Demand Transport Technology Aggregator Rules, 2016, made representations seeking to operate bike taxis on their platform.

The single-judge bench, in its order dated April 2, 2025, partly favoured the companies’ claim that motorcycles could be registered as transport vehicles under the provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act, and issued permits to operate as ‘contract carriages’.

However, it accepted the state government’s argument that aggregators did not have any crystallised right under the Act to ply the motorcycles as taxis. It held that it could not direct the state government to permit aggregators to operate bike taxis and directed bikes to be stopped from plying until the State framed clear rules.

Objections raised by the Karnataka Government

The state government has maintained that it had taken a policy decision not to permit bike taxis, and that only four-wheelers could be onboarded as taxis under the rules. It had cited passenger safety, increased congestion, the availability of public transport, and pollution as some reasons for its policy decision.

The Karnataka Government had said that motorcyclists could register as delivery partners under the Gig Workers Act, instead of operating bike-taxis.