BENGALURU: The state government on Wednesday informed the Karnataka High Court that it had forwarded the draft notification to the Law and Parliamentary Affairs Department to bring an amendment to the Karnataka On-demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rules, 2016, with regard to disengagement of child locks in the cabs.
The government advocate submitted before the court that the draft notification had been prepared to do away with child locks in cabs and the same was sent to the principal secretary of the transport department by the commissioner of transport on July 19, 2018.
The same had been forwarded to Law and Parliamentary Affairs Department on September 18 and was pending. Two weeks’ time was required to finalise it, the advocate submitted.The division bench of Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice S G Pandit observed that the state government needed two weeks’ time for this kind of serious issue. “Shall I send some officers? You tell what is to be done as it does not look proper to seek time of three weeks or four weeks casually when the matter is taken up for hearing,” the court observed while adjourning the case to October 10.
Bangalore Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BSOG) had moved the High Court seeking directves to disengage child locks in cabs, saying there was an urgent need to curb the menace of crimes against women passengers travelling in taxis by doing away with the child lock system.
Contending that the crimes against women travelling in taxis had increased tremendously, BSOG said the Karnataka On-demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rules, 2016 had a provision for switches/buttons mechanism, but needed to be amended to add an additional requirement to disengage the child lock feature permanently.
The petitioner said the authorities were in deep slumber despite crimes against women, such as molestation, rape and murder, were reported frequently in the city.