Patna: MLC Satish Kumar of the ruling JDU on Tuesday gave the Treasury bench some tough moments during Question Hour in the Legislative Council.

He bombarded public health and engineering minister Vinod Narayan Jha, who is from the BJP, with an arsenal of supplementary questions on piped water supply in Motihari town.

Satish had raised a question related to a Rs 9.67-crore drinking water project for Motihari town that had been formulated in 2010 and still not been completed.

The JDU MLC said three water towers had to be built for providing piped water in three localities of the town out of which only two had been constructed and those too had not been put to use.

Minister Jha replied that while one of the two water towers was working, the second one had developed some technical snag and it would be made functional within a fortnight.

The minister said the third tower could not be built as land was not available in the locality where it was supposed to come up. He also maintained that over Rs 2 crore was still unused under the project.

His reply infuriated Satish, who questioned the planning done by the field officials while formulating the details of the project.

"Seven years after the project had been formulated the officials are talking about unavailability of land," the JDU MLC retorted.

Satish, who is a native of Motihari, maintained that land was very much available in the locality, where a large number of people of the minority community live.

Kedar Pandey of the CPI joined in and urged Council deputy chairman Harun Rashid to direct the minister to get an assessment done of water towers across the state.

Pandey maintained that the JDU MLC had raised a very important question, and suggested that the public health and engineering department should find out how many water towers have been built in the state and how many of them have actually been put to use.

The minister, however, stuck to the Motihari town issue and repeated his reply that out of the two towers made, one was functional and the second one would be made functional within a fortnight.