It is not just Uber, but a couple of other aggregators and service providers have also been banned from city road as the Transport Department has released the list of eight city taxi service providers registered with them on Thursday, and termed the rest illegal.
According to Transport Commissioner Rame Gowda, any company providing city taxi service has to register with the department under City Taxi Service Scheme, 1998. “The aggregators cannot escape liability. Even they have to register under the City Taxi Scheme and follow all the 25 permit conditions to ply on road,” he added.
Mr. Gowda said that the department will publish the list of eight city taxi service providers registered with the department and thereby declare all other service providers illegal.
A few of the other prominent companies besides Uber that will go off the road are TaxiForSure, Carzonrent and Zoom, Mr. Gowda said, adding that there could be more service providers in the market that have mushroomed in the recent days. “However, there would be no formal order banning them as they are not registered with us in the first place. Hence, there is no question of banning them. If any unregistered service provider is running illegal operations, we will take action,” he said.
A senior transport official said the department would soon crackdown on illegal taxi service providers, and see to it that they do not continue their business. The official said that they are holding talks with the Bangalore city traffic police to conduct a special drive to seize vehicles that are being run for unregistered service providers.
TaxiForSure, in their statement, said that their business model was asset light and that they did not own any taxis. They claimed that they partner with operators who have valid documents. In the wake of recent developments, they were working with their operators to meet the due processes of law, they added.
Even after repeated attempts, Uber was not available for comment. A senior transport official said that though Ola is also an aggregator claiming to be a technology company, the company was also registered under City Taxi service Scheme and hence not banned.
