Vehicles with tinted glass on windows will not be allowed on Calcutta roads, police told transport operators during a Lalbazar meeting on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court had in 2012 issued a blanket ban on the use of any film on car windowpanes and windscreens.

But the ban is routinely flouted on the city road, mostly by the leaders of the ruling party, travelling in SUVs right under the nose of the police.

The latest police message comes in the wake of the RG Kar rape and murder.

At the meeting with the representatives of private transport service providers, police officers made it clear that tinted glass or curtains on windowpanes will not be allowed from now on.

“We will not allow anything that hinders the view inside,” an officer of the traffic department.

The operators and owners were told that no curtains would be allowed and the black tinted glasses from the windows of buses, minibuses and app-cabs would have to be removed immediately.

There should be nothing covering the glasses so that onlookers and eyewitnesses can see and raise the alarm in case of an emergency, the vehicle owners were told at the meeting.

Senior officers said the meeting at Lalbazar was held against the backdrop of the rape and murder of a junior doctor, which brought back memories of the Nirbhaya incident in Delhi in December 2012, in which a paramedic was gang-raped in a moving bus in the capital. She later succumbed to the injuries sustained in the assault.

The apex court ban came in May 2012.

Private bus, minibus and app cab operators would have to ensure that helpline numbers — 1073 and 1090 — are written clearly behind
the seats and prominently displayed on vehicles for passengers to make distress calls, the police told operators on Tuesday.

Officers also said owners must possess documents like the PAN, voter and Aadhaar cards of drivers they hire.

The vehicle owners must also have a certificate from the police saying the drivers do not have past criminal records, the officers said.

“There will be periodic checks on the roads to see whether the guidelines that are reiterated at the meeting were being adhered to or not,” said Yeilwad Shrikant Jagannathrao, DC (traffic) of Kolkata Police.