The Transport Department has given time till Monday for taxi aggregator Ola to comply with rules and come out with a response to the order suspending its licence for illegally operating bike taxis in the city.
According to the March 18 order, Ola was directed to immediately stop its services and surrender the licence to the authority concerned within three days of receiving the order.
Ola services were running as usual on Saturday.
Transport Commissioner V.P. Ikkeri told The Hindu that the department was awaiting a response from the aggregator. “The aggregator received the order on Friday and they have got three days to comply with the rules. We had issued the order for flouting aggregators’ rules and it can be revoked any time depending on compliance of the rules. Moreover, we have to explore all the legal options before taking stringent action because it can be questioned before the court of law,” he said.
He said Ola has a small fleet of cabs directly owned by it, while a majority of the cabs are attached by drivers through an MoU. “We have to consider their livelihood before taking any action as it will have a direct impact on their earnings. We, however, are not showing any kind of leniency towards aggregators and they must comply with the rules,” he said.
On March 5, the department had issued a show-cause notice to the company. The commissioner said, “While replying to previous notice, Ola had maintained that they had introduced bike-taxi service in city as a pilot project. Their reply was not satisfactory. They had introduced the service without any legal sanction.”
The department had impounded nearly 260 bike taxis of Ola in February.
On Thursday, the State Transport Authority, based on the Transport Commissioner’s order, directed RTOs in the State to enforce the rules and take action to stop Ola cab service.
RTO seeks documents
On Friday, Bengaluru Central RTO (Koramangala) issued a “check report” to Ola for operating business despite being asked by the department to stop their service.
An RTO official said, “We had received a direction from the department to take action if Ola continues to operate services. Our officials found out that one can book a taxi on the mobile app of Ola, so a check report was issued seeking documents such as licence, RC, FC, and PUC, They have got seven days to submit the records.”