The Supreme Court on Friday warned state governments and union territories that failure to comply with its orders on taking preventive measures like capping of abandoned borewells, which have been death pits for children, will invite stern action.

"This will not stop unless we take action," a bench of Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Justice Swatanter Kumar said when its attention was drawn to an incident in which a child fell to her death in a village in Punjab recently.

The bench was irked as senior advocate P S Patwalia, who is assisting the court as an amicus curaie, in the matter submitted that the guidelines laid down by the Centre on the issue were not being complied with by the authorities.

"Nothing seems to have been done," he told the bench by narrating the incident in Dhira village near Batala town in Gurdaspur district where a one-and-a-half year-old girl died after falling into a 200-foot-deep borewell on June 2.

The bench said it will hear the issue after four weeks and asked the counsel to make a list of the states which have not taken action on its Februrary 11 order. "Today what we want is an action report," it said.

The apex court on February 11 had ordered that District Collectors across the country should personally monitor the construction of new borewells and take measures to cap abandoned borewells.