The Madras High Court on Friday dismissed a public interest litigation petition that accused online transportation network companies Ola and Uber of posing a grave threat to the livelihood of many independent auto-rickshaw drivers by offering auto-rickshaw rides for much lower rental rates than what had been fixed by the State government.

A Division Bench of Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad refused to entertain the case on the ground that the government officials could be directed to act only if there was an allegation of passengers being charged more than the government fixed rates and not if they were getting benefitted by a transportation service that charges less.

Stating that competitive rates would ultimately benefit the passengers, the judges said, it was up to the PIL petitioner, K. Rajkumar, an independent auto-rickshaw driver not aligned with any of the two mobile app based transportation companies, to also reduce his rates if he was interested in getting more number of passengers.