Licences for Ola, Uber: Tribunal sets July 8 as next date of hearing

Tuesday’s hearing was postponed after April to decide whether both companies would receive permission to run their services in the city. Both companies approached the tribunal after their applications submitted to the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) were rejected in March.

The RTA’s chairperson and the collector, Suhas Diwase, had chaired the meeting on March 11 in the presence of other transport authorities to review the documents submitted by Ola and Uber. It was found that the companies’ documents did not comply with the required norms formulated by the Central Government’s Motor Vehicles Aggregators’ (MVA) Guidelines, 2020.

Concluding the meeting, the RTA declined the applications and instructed the RTO to issue rejection letters. Subsequently, the RTO officially rejected the applications of ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd (parent company of Ola) and Uber India System Pvt Ltd.

In accordance with the MVA, the companies received a 30-day window to appeal to higher authorities, in this case, the SAT. In response, the SAT had announced the hearing date as April 22 and requested the RTO to present its stance against the companies.

In January this year, the RTA had announced revised taxi fares following consistent demands by app-based platform drivers and gig workers. The RTA introduced new fares by increasing the rates of air-conditioned taxis by Rs 37 for the first one and a half kilometres and Rs 25 for every kilometre thereafter. However, Ola and Uber did not comply with the RTA’s order.

After prolonged agitations by drivers’ unions, various meetings were held between them and company representatives under the mediation of transport officials.

Unfortunately, the outcome was inconclusive. Finally, the District Collector rejected the licence applications of these aggregators for not meeting legal norms.