The city needs a fresh master plan to revamp its drainage system and tackle waterlogging effectively, the high court observed on Friday.

The only master plan the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) possesses was prepared in 1959 and has become dated.

“The city’s character has changed over the past 50 years. Following the construction of multi-storeyed buildings and rapid increase in population, the state government and the civic authorities need to prepare a fresh master plan for Calcutta’s development,” said the division bench of Chief Justice S.S. Nijjar and Justice P.C. Ghosh.

The court asked the state and the CMC to identify the reasons for waterlogging in many city pockets and find a solution.

It also asked the government and the civic body to file affidavits within four weeks stating the steps they had taken to revamp the drainage system.

The CMC on Friday filed a report which the court had sought a year ago, detailing the measures taken to tackle waterlogging on the basis of the WHO-approved master plan of 1959. The fresh affidavit will list the steps taken over the past year.

Friday’s report blamed waterlogging partly on the communication gap between government departments.

“The canals around the city have not been dredged for years. As a result, the accumulated rain water cannot be drained out fast. The irrigation, fisheries and agriculture departments and the Calcutta Metropolitan Water Sanitation Authority are the custodians of the canals. The CMC has made several representations to the departments but nothing has been done,” the report added.

But the court was not happy with the report, pointing out that the civic authorities should have been more active in handling the problem.

Last July, when most parts of the city were flooded following a prolonged downpour, environment activist Subhash Dutta had moved a PIL seeking the high court’s intervention in tackling the “hazards faced by the common people” of the city.

Dutta claimed the CMC had failed to maintain the drainage system.

Dutta’s petition came up for hearing in August last year, when the judge had asked the CMC to file a report detailing what it had done to address the problem. The second hearing was on Friday.