NGT disposes plea against taxi aggregators

NEW DELHI: The National Green Tribunal today disposed of petitions which alleged that diesel powered inter-state taxis operating in the national capital were violating Supreme Court directive.

A bench headed by Justice U D Salvi disposed of the pleas filed by an apex body of radio taxi operators and a Delhi resident seeking prohibition on running of diesel taxis in NCR Delhi.

The green panel's direction came after it was informed that the Supreme Court has already passed a direction that all taxis including aggregators like OLA and UBER operating in the NCR "to be converted to CNG not later than March 31, 2016".

"In view of this, nothing much survives in the petitions as their grievance has been disposed of. In view of the order passed by the Supreme Court, we do not see any reason to keep the pleas pending," the bench said.

Association of Radio Taxis and a city resident, Davinder Pal Singh, had last year moved the Tribunal against pollution caused by the "illegal" usage and plying of diesel taxis like Uber, Ola and TaxiForSure bearing All India Tourist Permit, as local taxis within the Delhi-NCR region.

The petitions had contended that all commercial vehicles including local taxis operating in Delhi are required to be run only on CNG as per the apex court order.

The petition contended that since beginning, companies like OLA, UBER, TaxiForSure, Book My Cabs, Taxipixi, Meru Genie have been acting "in contravention and in blatant defiance of the law" and have even refused to get appropriate licences and permits for running their services.

Earlier, the green bench had issued notice to Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, Delhi government and several radio taxi operators including ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, Serendipity Infolabs Pvt Ltd and Uber India Systems Pvt Ltd.