If Supreme Court has its way then ride hailing majors like Uber and Ola will soon have to abide by new rules and regulations to ensure the safety of women passengers. The country’s top court on Wednesday ordered the Indian government to consider framing law to regulate cab hailing companies for providing adequate security to women passengers.
The SC’s order came in response to a petition filed by Nipun Saxena, who has been requested by the Justice S.A. Bobde bench to give representation to the Ministry of Transport and accordingly provide suggestions for framing laws to regulate the mobile app based taxi providers.
The petitioner also complained that the central government has already given necessary guidelines for setting up crisis center to address sexual offence cases but state governments were not cooperating on this issue.
Responding to the grievance, the top court directed the central government to set up a one stop crises center in each district to ensure proper resolution of sexual offence cases and ordered the state governments to strictly comply by the guidelines.
Woman safety: A big challenge for Uber and Ola
Over the years, Ola and Uber have faced lot of flaks for their inability to ensure proper safety of women passengers, resulting in barrage of sexual offense and even rape cases. The extreme vulnerability faced by women passengers was brought forth by last year’s sensational case in Bengaluru, where a Ola cab driver had allegedly forced a woman passenger to strip for taking erotic photographs. The driver then allegedly shared these photos on his WhatsApp number.
Frequent occurrence of sexual assault cases have caused enormous bad press for Ola and Uber and even adversely impacted their business. Both ride-hailing majors claimed that they have put in place strict rules and guidelines to perform accurate background check before hiring drivers.