Assam: Private Vehicles Allowed to Use Carpooling Services

GUWAHATI: In a landmark step towards income generation and decreasing vehicle load on the roads of the cities, the Assam Cabinet permitted owners of private vehicles to work towards carpooling. Additionally, this can be done without any changes to the number plates of the vehicles. This decision was announced after a cabinet meeting on Thursday, December 15.

Private vehicle owners of the state will now be allowed to use the Uber Pool, Ola Share or any other similar services from cab aggregators. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma gave a briefing about this. However, users of the services must have themselves associated with one of the aggregators or taxi rental service providers.

Two-wheelers with private registration can also avail of similar services while working for existing players like Ola, Uber and Rapido but they have been capped at a maximum of four trips per day. These players already have a very large section of the market under their control. But this often leads to conflicts with customers as the drivers aim to charge them more than the billed amount citing a variety of reasons.

Himanta Biswa Sarma mentioned that this new facility will help students and people from low-income groups to make a small income to generate their pocket money as well as sustain minor expenditures.

"I have a private car and while traveling to the office now one can pick up four people as passengers....which can be termed as pool service," the chief minister mentioned while talking about the private vehicles.

Owners of private vehicles will now be able to link their vehicles with existing cab aggregator services. This will go with a particular remark that mentions that the car will be available at 10 AM in the morning and at 5 PM in the afternoon. The service providers will be able to attach passengers to the vehicles so that the people can move in one vehicle.

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