Jalpaiguri, March 30: The municipality here is sending a team of doctors to check the health of the seven students who are the only inmates left at the hostel of Ananda Chandra College after 20 of them went down with hepatitis over the past fortnight.

Thirty-five students left the hostel when a couple of them had jaundice two weeks ago. Yesterday the college authorities contacted the municipality officials and asked them to check the quality of water they supplied from the tank built back in 1885. ?After drawing water from the Karala river the municipality does not purify it with chlorine. The filter plant is very old and the civic body is not improving it,? said CPM leader of the opposition in the civic body Sibapada Bhowmick. Assistant general secretary of the college union Nirmalya Chakrabarty said: ?We have 20 confirmed cases of jaundice and no one is doing anything about this.?

?The PWD looks after water supply to schools and colleges, however, we will send a medical team to the hostel on April 1 to check the blood samples of the students there. The allegations raised by the Opposition is a gimmick before the civic polls,? said Mohan Bose, the chairman of the Congress-run municipality.