‘Should Ola, Uber drivers be declared employees?’

HC NOTICE TO CENTRE, DELHI GOVT

THE DELHI High Court has issued a notice to the Centre and the Delhi government on a plea by a cab drivers' union to ensure that app-based cab aggregators, Uber and Ola, operated in consonance with social welfare and labour laws without violating the fundamental rights of the drivers.

Counsels for Delhi Commercial Driver Union, Akash Vajpai and Shoumendu Mukherji, said the union included drivers employed with Uber India Systems Pvt Ltd and ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd (Ola Cabs). More than 1.5 lakh drivers working with both the companies in the NCR were exploited besides being denied benefits of labour laws, said the plea.

The drivers were not provided with independent decision making at any stage, once a customer made a booking. The chargeable fare varied on a daily basis, and drivers “suffered deductions in their payments on vague and unsubstantiated grounds, without even being given a chance to respond,” claimed the councels for the drivers' union.

On occasions when ‘trips’ were obtained by fraud by any individual by stealing the identity of a customer, there was no indemnity scheme to compensate the driver for loss of income, they further claimed. The single-judge bench headed by Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva issued the notice seeking reply from the Centre and the Delhi government. The court also issued a notice to Ola and Uber. The matter has been posted for further hearing on August 10.