The Italian team at Jalpaiguri Municipality. (Biplab Basak)

Cooch Behar, June 11: A team of officials representing Italian government held discussions with the chairman of the Congress-run Cooch Behar Municipality, Biren Kundu, this morning on a Rs 16-crore water purification project.

The four-member expert group that arrived here yesterday went around various wards to get a first hand knowledge of water shortage the municipality is facing. Water lifted from the Torsha would be purified before reaching every household in the municipality.

Kundu said when the CPM ruled the civic body, the public health engineering (PHE) department was entrusted with the job of maintaining drinking water supply. The party was in power till June 1995.

“But the way the PHE had carried out the task was unscientific and faulty. Even though we had taken over the municipality in June 1995, the maintenance of water supply was the responsibility of the PHE till the end of 2003,” the chairman said.

According to Kundu, the municipality was in touch with the Italian government after it had taken over the water supply in 2003. He said work would start shortly as the survey on the project was complete. The project will be a reality within two years, he claimed.

On the other hand, woman supporters of the Forward Bloc went around the town with empty vessels on head to protest against the “acute water scarcity” in Ward 19. They also met Kundu with a memorandum.