Govt drafting norms for ride-sharing: Mandatory KYC for users, limit of 4 rides a day

The Centre wants carpooling to be a no-profit no-loss service so that it doesn’t become a commercial activity.

Money Ride Sharing

The Central Government has finalized the draft policy guidelines for the car-pooling service being run as a commercial venture by private car owners. This is being worked on by the Ministry of Transportation’s road transport division.

According to an Economic Times report, the highlights of the guidelines include a KYC of users of the service to be made mandatory and fixing a maximum of four rides per day per individual. The Ministry may first place the draft guidelines for obtaining comments from the public before forwarding them to the states.

The crux of this policy will be that the venture must be run on a ‘no-profit-no-loss’ basis. The broad objective is to share the cost of using the vehicles between the users so that no one is at a loss and at the same time, there will be lesser number of cars on the roads bringing the pollution and traffic levels down a notch.

Some of the other suggestions include the stipulation that the car-pooling service must be offered through an app. Whoever is administering the app will have to be made responsible for a proper KYC of the car owner as well as the riders before they are allowed to be part of the ecosystem.

The states can add a small fee to be paid to it out of the carpooling service operations, if wanted.

The new guidelines will also ensure that the states get some revenue from carpooling. This suggestion is aimed at making the state government have a vested interest in running this facility and encouraging it. There are apps already in operation, like Quick Ride and BlaBlaCar. These will have to make suitable changes to their applications once the guidelines are approved and become law in the respective states.

If the app-based hail-a-cab operators like Ola and Uber wish to enter the carpooling business, they will have to create a separate platform and not include it in their existing arrangement as per these guidelines.

This policy framework is part of the larger National Mission for Transformative Mobility announced by the government earlier.