A joint team of the city police and motor vehicles department officials will inspect pool cars and ask the owners of vehicles appearing “unfit to ply” to get them tested for fitness in a day.

“If a pool car is found plying with broken doors, on retreaded tyres or without a speed-limiter, the joint team will seize the vehicle under the West Bengal Motor Vehicles Rules. The vehicle will not be spared even if the owner has a fitness certificate for it,” an official in the transport department said.

“The owner will be handed a ‘defect notice’ and he or she will be asked to get the vehicle retested for fitness in a day. If an unfit vehicle is found to have a valid fitness certificate, the owner will still have to get it retested after paying the fee.”

Repeat offenders may have the registration of their vehicles cancelled.

Transport department officials conveyed the decisions to representatives of the unions of pool car and school bus operators at a meeting on Wednesday.

Senior officers of Calcutta and Bengal police attended the meeting, which was chaired by transport secretary N.S. Nigam.

The date and the time of the inspections will be finalised in a day or two after all traffic guards in the city are informed about the planned crackdown, sources at Lalbazar said.

Around 1,200 pool cars ferry close to 6,000 schoolchildren daily in Calcutta. Pool car operators said even autorickshaws and e-rickshaws are used as pool cars in some pockets of Calcutta.

The government’s decision to crack the whip on unfit pool cars comes days after such a vehicle met with an accident in Hooghly’s Polba, around 50km from Calcutta, leaving three students critically injured.

A Force Cruiser, which was ferrying the three and a few other children, had run out of control and skidded on the road before hurtling into a ditch last Friday.

“A preliminary probe has revealed that the vehicle was plying on retreaded tyres. The car was being driven at 90kmph as the speed-limiting device was kept unhooked,” said an officer.

Just four days before the accident, on February 10, the vehicle had cleared a fitness test. The car reportedly had proper tyres and a functional speed-limiter when it underwent the test.

“The fitness certificate was not issued that day because the owner had failed to show permit papers. He was given three days to produce those papers,” an official at the Chinsurah RTO said.

“Across Calcutta, several private vehicles operate as pool cars in violation of norms. If these vehicles are prevented from doing business, half the battle will be won,” said Anjan Mukhopadhayay, the secretary of the Bengal Carpool Welfare Association.

Several pool car operators Metro spoke to said the rising cost of insurance premium and tax stood in the way of abiding by all norms.

“The insurance premium of a 13-seater vehicle was Rs 17,700 in 2012. It has gone up to Rs 37,000 in 2020. Parents are not ready to pay Rs 200 more and we are forced to cut corners,” said a pool car operator from south Calcutta.

The transport department has decided that it would ask the school education department to request schools to collect information about pool-car users and pass it on to them.

After the data is ready, the government will try to reach out to schools and request them to ask parents to run a check on the vehicle’s condition before opting for the particular pool car operator.