The Karnataka On-demand Transportation Aggregators Rules (OTTA), 2016, is discriminatory in many ways as it imposes a series of norms only on the taxi drivers attached to the aggregators, whereas a driver can operate his taxi independently without adhering to any of these norms.

This was how Uber, a taxi technology aggregator, has questioned the OTTA rules terming them as discriminatory in nature during the hearing of its petition before the Karnataka High Court on Friday.

Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, who argued for Uber, pointed out that the rule imposes conditions that a driver, attached to an aggregator should have a minimum driving experience of two years, should be a resident of Karnataka for a minimum period of two years and have working knowledge of Kannada and any one other language (preferably English), should hold a KYC-compliant bank account and a Pan card, and should not have any criminal record.

He questioned how the government could impose these conditions on drivers and owners of cars linked to the aggregators when any taxi driver or owner in the State can offer services to the passengers without following any of these conditions if they are operating on their own or through a non-aggregator taxi service providers such as radio taxi operator or those operating through phone calls.

Against passenger rights

Poovayya also questioned how can the government ask the aggregators to collect the details of the passengers who travelled in the vehicle and allow inspection of such records to the government authorities as such an act would be against the individual rights of the passengers.

On surge pricing, he contended that it would encourage taxi drivers to pick up passengers by travelling longer distance and thus make available more taxis in a location where less number of taxies are available during certain period of the day.

The hearing is scheduled to continue on Monday.

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