The Delhi Government Transport Department requested the Department of Electronic and Information Technology (DEITY) to block the web-based apps of three major cab-hailing companies in India namely Ola, Uber & TaxiForSure. The request was made after it was discovered that the companies were still using their apps and providing services despite the ban which was imposed on taxi operators providing their services through the web-based apps by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) as a consequence of the rape of a private executive by an Uber operator.
The Story Behind The Petition
The companies resumed their operations in the capital within a few weeks by adopting a mobile application model which aggregates the information about autos in the city. Therefore the state government believed that now blocking the apps is the only way to enforce the ban.
Thus, demands were now made to get the apps of such taxi services blocked to ensure that they are not able to solicit passengers unauthorisedly through their apps.
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The petition filed by Geetanjali Gupta, the Secretary & Commissioner of Delhi’s Transport Department stated that various complaints have been received concerning the operation of such services which put the safety and security of commuters at risk. The Transport department maintained that these companies were not operating legally as they were running without the necessary licenses.
After the filing of the petition, it is now being argued whether the government can ask the telecom providers to block the IP address that enables the users to use these apps or not. However, there is still not any clarity on what repercussions it may have on the government to impose bans on an app that is being used by millions of people every day. According to technical experts, blocking an app is harder than blocking a website.
Consequently, in a major decision, the Delhi government also rejected fresh applications for license by US-based taxi booking firms Uber and two other such service providers—Ola and TaxiForSure. applications of the three taxi aggregators were rejected on the grounds of not filing undertakings stating they were complying with a ban imposed on them.
This alleged rape occurred in a Uber taxi without a GPS. Therefore the Delhi government has also ordered all taxi operators plying in the national capital to install GPS in their vehicles. The taxi-hailing apps have also been required to have emergency buttons in their cabs and have tracking devices installed in them.
Lately, the taxi services market of India, despite facing financial stress, has received attention from global investors, primarily because the “radio taxi” model has emerged as the fastest-growing and most reliable form of public transport for the world’s second-largest population.
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Ola received fresh funding from Japan’s Softbank last year. If reports are to be believed, Ola is close to getting the next round of funding from the Russian billionaire – Yuri Milner. There are 19 radio taxi operators in the country, including Mega Cabs, Easy Cabs, Meru Cabs, and Tab Cabs, according to the Association of Radio Taxis which runs about 25,000 cabs across India. The taxi market generates a combined annual revenue of about Rs 11,000 crore in India with about 600000 taxis in operation.
Conclusion
In the current times, when the need and trend for such easily accessible transport services is only rising day by day, the blocking of the web applications of these taxi services seems to be a major hurdle in the comfort of the metropolitan cities.
