The high court on Wednesday directed the Victoria Memorial Hall curator to prepare an inventory of the exhibits in the museum within four weeks and table it before the bench hearing the case.

The division bench of Justice P.C. Ghose and Justice M.K. Chakrabarti passed the order after green activist Subhas Datta submitted that the memorial authorities had been sitting on a 1993 order of the court seeking a report on the exhibits.

“Since then (1993 order), the authorities concerned have been assuring this court that they will furnish the report shortly. Till date no such report has been submitted,” said Datta, whose petition on the impact of environment pollution on the marble monument the bench is hearing.

“At times the memorial authorities have said there are 27,000 exhibits. On other occasions they have put the figure at 28,000. Following a query by the court in 2006, the authorities said a list of 20 per cent of the exhibits had been prepared and assured the court that the rest would be recorded within a few months. But the list is not yet ready.”

The court had in September 28, 2007, ordered the government to take steps to shift the Esplanade bus terminus to a place at least 3km from the memorial to save it from environment pollution.

When the case came up for hearing last month, the division bench had asked the chief secretary to file an affidavit stating the steps the government had taken to shift the terminus.

On Wednesday, government pleader Ashok Banerjee submitted that he would discuss the issue with the chief secretary and the home secretary and report the outcome to the bench. The bench asked Banerjee to invite Datta to the meeting.

nJob racket: Ankit Pandey, 19, a resident of Shibpur, was arrested on Tuesday night in connection with a job racket. A victim had lodged a complaint with Golabari police station.