The action plan will have to be submitted to the Court and the Monitoring Committee, the bench comprising Chief Justice VS Sirpurkar and Justice Arun Kumar Mitra has ruled. The verdict, passed on Thursday, gives a three-week deadline to the mu nicipalities. In a notice issued last week, the bench also asked the Union Ministry for Environment and Forest to join as a party in the West Bengal chapter of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP).

The court had pulled up the civic bodies earlier, too, in this regard, though none of the municipalities have yet fully implemented the previous court order.

While Howrah municipal authorities claimed to have taken significant steps to meet the court's demands -- setting up a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) at Kona and a sewerage station in Arupara -- the Kolkata Municipal Corporation refused to admit its failure in introducing any action plan till date.

Howrah Mayor Gopal Mukherjee said: "Sewage water is first treated at the STP before it is drained into the Ganga. We have done what was required of us, at least in the first phase." City Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharjee, meanwhile, said, "It (action plan to clean Ganga) is not the job of KMC alone. It is an integrated plan involving all municipalities." He, however, failed to specify programmes that the KMC has either undertaken or proposes to launch.