Delhi High Court orders no coercive action be taken against bike taxi operations of Rapido, Uber

The Delhi High Court Friday ordered the Delhi government not to take any coercive action against bike taxi aggregators Rapido and Uber till guidelines governing such aggregators are notified..A Division Bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna passed the order on a petition filed by Rapido. The Court also passed a similar order on Uber’s plea.Parag Maini, partner at AZB Law Partners, the law firm which represented Rapido, confirmed the development and said that the order is not only a big relief to them but to more several bike-taxi operators who are associated with the company..The Delhi government had issued a public notice in February stating that bike taxis are not allowed in the national capital and that the two-wheelers having non-transport (private) registration indulging in purely commercial operations would be in violation of Motor Vehicles Act and rules made under the ActThe transport department had also said that app-based aggregators will have to stop their services immediately or they will face a challan of ₹1 lakh.Rapido then approached the Court challenging the notices as well as the constitutional validity of Delhi Motor Vehicle Rules..Senior Advocate Jayant Mehta argued the case for Rapido. He was briefed by AZB & Partners team consisting of Hardeep Sachdeva, Abhishek Awasthi (Senior Partners), Kamal Shankar, Parag Maini (Partners, Dispute Resolution) and Raghav Chadha, Pradyumna Sharma, Kshitiz Rao (Senior Associates). .Earlier, the Maharashtra government had refused to grant two-wheeler bike taxi aggregator license to Rapido. The Bombay High Court had rejected Rapido's plea challenging the decision. The High Court order was challenged before the Supreme Court which also refused relief to Rapido.