Chandigarh: The Chandigarh administration may have pulled the plug on Uber and Rapido on paper, but on the ground, the ride-hailing apps were still very much alive on Wednesday.The first shock was felt by commuters in the morning, when several found their usual cabs missing and had to fall back on auto-rickshaws. By evening, however, the suspended apps were still accepting bookings, leaving the administration’s crackdown looking more like a speed breaker than a complete stop.Abhijeet Khurana, a Sector 17 resident of Panchkula who works with a private company in Chandigarh, said his regular cab option simply disappeared during the morning rush. “I didn’t get a taxi through my regular aggregator app in the morning. I had to opt for an auto-rickshaw to reach the office. But my colleagues who travelled in the evening said cabs were available, and that too at normal rates,” he said.For commuters travelling within the tricity, the problem was more about shrinking choices. “I had to go to Mohali. Though cabs were available on the aggregator app that I regularly use, there were fewer options,” said Sector 22 resident Satwinder Singh.While commuters struggled to find rides, the State Transport Authority (STA) initiated action against cab drivers operating through unlicensed apps, issuing around 70 challans during the day to cab drivers and bike-taxi operators allegedly violating the suspension order.Officials stopped cabs carrying passengers and checked the mobile apps used to book the rides. They also questioned passengers about the platform through which they had booked the vehicle, an attempt to establish whether suspended aggregators were continuing to operate despite the ban.Drivers stay off roads, but bookings keep flowingThe crackdown also triggered caution among drivers. Vikram Singh Pundir, president of the Tricity Cab Drivers Welfare Association Chandigarh, said nearly half the cabs operating from Mohali and Panchkula initially stayed away from Chandigarh after news of the challaning drive spread through social media groups.“Many cabs remained off the roads after reports of the STA initiating challaning against violators started circulating in our social media groups,” he said.Yet, according to Pundir, the apps did not stop taking bookings. “Bookings on the apps continued unabated. The only difference was that fewer cabs were available for booking,” he said.Pundir claimed the administration was putting the burden of enforcement on drivers instead of the aggregators. “We have already served a legal notice to the Chandigarh administration as its earlier suspension order proved totally ineffective. Even today, commuters were able to book and avail themselves of transportation services through these apps whose licences have been cancelled. The administration is only challaning drivers, while no action is being taken against the aggregators,” he said.Bharat Taxi claims a windfallWith Uber, Rapido, Ola and inDrive all out of the legal race, Bharat Taxi has suddenly found itself with a captive market.Aakash Saxena, city head of Bharat Taxi, said: “Ridership shot up from around 1,000 trips a day to more than 10,000, while the driver base increased from about 250 to nearly 1,500. Applications from another 500 drivers are pending.”Manoj Shukla, an IT professional who travelled from Panchkula to Chandigarh, said, “I tried to book a cab through Bharat Taxi, but there were no cabs available, so I had to opt for my regular aggregator whose licence was suspended on Tuesday. But the driver was anxious about being challaned in Chandigarh. He himself said he would be shifting to Bharat Taxi in the coming days.”Chandigarh has more than 25,000 aggregator cabs operating across the tricity, most of them registered in Punjab and Haryana.“For commuters, though, the immediate question is simpler: if the apps are still taking bookings, who exactly has been banned, the aggregator or just the cab on the road?” said Shukla.
