Ola and Uber no ride any more

Are you victim of car rides cancelation very often on the whims and fancy of your cab driver booked through Uber and Ola platform ? You would also have been compelled to pay thrice the amount of base fare. But it seems that days of customer being taken for ride either by aggregators or drivers are over.

As per the new guidelines of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and as per the requirements and provisions of the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019 and further as per the amended Section 93 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, now both the above stands banned.

No more ride cancelation

The new rule provides for no more arbitrary cancelation by cab drivers. Henceforth, the drivers are supposed to receive two more information along with booking of ride, one, the destination and two, the mode of payment so that they can decide about accepting the ride or not, thus minimizing the chance of cancelation.

The aggregators are allowed to charge 50% less fare than the base fare and allow them to impose a maximum surge pricing of 1.5 times the base fare.

What are the new guidelines for a driver?

This new move is also aimed at providing minimum earning with defined structure and safety for drivers. Now, every cab driver is to be provided with health insurance for an amount not less than Rs 5 lakh with 5% increase each year

In addition to above 10 lakh term insurance should also be provided to every cab driver. The aggregator is also asked to conduct refresher training programs once a year for all cab drivers. A compulsory five-day training for the cab drivers at the time of induction is also now mandatory.

To ensure minimum and fair earnings the cab driver will have to receive at least 80% of the fare applicable on each ride, while the aggregator will receive the remaining charges. Earlier for cab aggregators, there was no fixed commission, they could get 20-30% of the earning depending on the ride.

New rule for application(app)

Now, the aggregators will have to provide accessibility to application both in English and Hindi as primary languages for the rider along with one official language of the relevant state, where the official language is not Hindi.

Also, the app should be accessible in a language that is understandable to cab drivers. For the data generated on the app, the aggregators have to store those data on a server in India, and such stored data will need to be stored for a minimum of three months and a maximum of 24 months from the date on which such data was generated.

As per the due process of law, such data have to be available to the concerned state government, the guidelines also stipulated that any data of the customer shall not be disclosed without the written consent of the customer.

What are changes made for a customer?

Car pooling facility is legal but it will be provided only to the customers, whose KYC information and details are available. In the case of a female passenger who wishes to avail of ride-pooling, the aggregator will need to provide those female passengers option to pool with another female passenger.

There is also a cancellation charge for the riders that is a penalty of 10% of the total fare which should not exceed Rs 100.?And that cancellation penalty imposed on the rider will be divided between the aggregator and the driver in the proportion of the decided commission rate.

How much is fare ?

The base fare chargeable shall be the city taxi fare indexed by Wholesale Price Index(WPI) for the current year. And for the states where a city taxi fare has not been determined for those states, their base fare will be an amount of Rs 25 or 30. The base minimum fare chargeable to customers will be for a minimum of 3 km to compensate for dead mileage and fuel utilized and distance traveled for picking up the customers.

The aggregators are allowed to charge 50% less fare than the base fare and allow them to impose a maximum surge pricing of 1.5 times the base fare.

Hope, with this, now customers won't be taken for ride either by cab drivers or aggregators and drivers too can enjoy happy ride while driving you around.

Dr Ajay Kummar Pandey,

Advocate, Supreme Court of India.

4C Supreme Law International, Delhi, Mumbai and Dubai.

www.4Csupremelawint.com

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