Raote made the statement while speaking at the inauguration ceremony of 30th Road Safety Week at YB Chavan Centre.
For the first time in a public forum, the state transport minister Diwakar Raote called the Uber and Ola to be illegal.
Raote made the statement while speaking at the inauguration ceremony of 30th Road Safety Week at YB Chavan Centre. Highlighting the fact that people prefer using Ola and Uber over regular kaali-peeli taxis or Cool Cabs, he said, "Both Uber and Ola are illegal. They register their vehicles on the national permit and ply here as taxis. The RTOs have not taken any action against them yet. From now, only those vehicles of Ola and Uber that running on CNG will be allowed to ply in the city under City Taxi Scheme."
As per rules of City Taxi Scheme, all taxis and autos should be running on CNG. Over the years, the taxi and autorickshaw unions had been complaining that their businesses have been affected under the rule. While the time taken to fill their gas tanks was worrisome, the addition of aggregator cabs with higher engine capacities added to their woes, they said.
Sources in RTO said that the issues pertaining to mobile aggregators have escalated with vehicles priced at Rs 4 lakh or less are being bought and introduced to run as Ola and Uber cabs. At present of the 33 lakh vehicles in the city, over one lakh are registered as transport vehicles across the state.
Last month, the Bombay High Court has asked Maharashtra government to speed up its decision around fare-fixing for app-based ride-hailing companies such as Ola and Uber. The High Court has given a window of eight weeks to the government.
The decision is supposed to be taken on the basis of a 2017 report submitted by a state-appointed committee to fix fares for app-based cab aggregators Ola and Uber.
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