Of all the fissures within the Trinamul Congress leadership that have cropped up in the recent past, the one between writer-turned-politician Manoranjan Bapari and a section of the party leadership in Hooghly’s Balagarh appears to be standing on a completely different pedestal. That’s because the war of words between the two sides has already been followed up by violence. And that, Bapari says, the acrimony could cost him his life.

That fear and apprehension has led the Balagarh MLA – whose personal security detail has now been withdrawn – to remain largely camped in Calcutta, some 76 kilometers away from his constituency, in a self-imposed exile. Bapari, however, plans to visit his constituency on Tuesday to participate in a meeting of the Trinamul’s Hooghly district committee which has been convened, perceptively, to iron out differences between the MLA and his adversaries in the party.

“I will think about my next course of action, depending on the outcome of that meeting,” Bapari told The Telegraph Online while stating that he wasn’t aware if any top rung party leadership would be present at that meeting to mediate.

The latest fallout came to the fore after Bapari took to social media last week to lash out at the Balagarh leader and general secretary of the Trinamul youth wing, Runa Khatun, and explain his sustained absence from his constituency. The leader, without directly naming Khatun, called her the “Phoolan Devi of Balagarh who moves around with 20-25 sharp shooters” and who has “publicly threatened to bury him six feet under”.

Khatun responded by calling these allegations “ramblings of a deranged person” and challenged the MLA to return to his constituency and face her.

While the public spat came in the backdrop of back-to-back old-guard versus new-blood leadership debates flying thick and fast in the Trinamul between the likes of Subrata Bakshi and Kunal Ghosh, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Tapas Roy, Arjun Singh and Somnath Shyam, and even the veteran Abdul Karim Chowdhury now taking on Abhishek Banerjee, what set apart the Balagarh tussle from the rest was the fact that within hours of Bapari voicing his opinion on social media, his MLA office in Jirat was ransacked by “unidentified” miscreants. The house of at least one local panchayat member maintaining political proximity to Bapari was also reportedly vandalized and her husband assaulted.

Bapari had responded: “My apprehension turned out to be correct at last. My office in Jirat was destroyed by miscreants under the command of Runa Khatun and her husband, Arijit. The doors and windows of the office have been smashed. They have thrown away party flags and crushed photos of Didi. I ask the people of Balagarh to think what sort of Didi followers these people are.”

Khatun, on her part, lodged a complaint against Bapari at the Balagarh police station charging the MLA with posting obscene comments against her on Facebook. Bapari, however, deleted the post in question soon after and stated that it was done in a fit of rage and that he regretted doing it. That act, evidently, failed to impress his adversary within the party.

A Pashimbanga Bangla Akademi awardee Dalit author and a Namasudra refugee from Bangladesh, Bapari forayed into institutional politics during the 2021 state elections when he replaced the two-time sitting Trinamul MLA, Ashim Majhi, and won the Balagarh seat by a modest margin of 5,784 votes over his nearest BJP rival. Bapari has since hogged headlines for reasons particularly unpleasing to the ears of the party’s district leadership and which did little on the ground to cement his position in the ruling Trinamul.

Prior to that, Bapari’s chequered background included incarceration for his association with the outlawed Maoists of Dandakaranya and having to pull rickshaws for a living under financial constraints. Precluded from availing formal education, Bapari's self-directed educational pursuits resulted in him authoring 12 novels, in addition to over a hundred short stories and non-fiction essays.

In June 2023, ahead of the panchayat polls, Bapari had stepped down as a general secretary of the party’s state unit as well as the panchayat election committee, over differences on the selection of candidates. His immediate rival faction comprised zilla parishad member and leader of the party’s youth wing, Runa Khatun, who was among the winning candidates. Bapari, though, continues to hold his chair as the state Dalit Sathitya Akademi chairperson.

Trinamul insiders say Bapari does not owe his allegiance to any particular leader in the party, which makes him somewhat unique and at the same time pushes him into a lonely corner. “When the internal survey was conducted by poll strategist Prashant Kishore’s team in 2021, Balagarh was counted among the “lost” seats,” said a Trinamul leader from Hooghly. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Trinamul was trailing in the constituency to the BJP by over 34,000 votes. Incumbent MLA Asim Majhi, who had won the seat twice in 2011 and 2016, was dropped and replaced by Bapari.

“He stunned everyone by winning the seat. After the results Majhi was heard saying if he had been given the ticket the margin would have been higher,” the leader said. “Things have not been particularly rosy for Bapari in the party since he became an MLA. He is unlike the average politician in a mainstream party.”

Interestingly, Bparai, in his Facebook post, claimed that his crusade against the local Trinamul land and sand mafia and operators of gambling joints led to him getting blacklisted within his party. He also refers to a “Kolkatar Babu” who allegedly mentors Khatun in the organization. Public perception states that Khatun, a school teacher, worked her way through the ranks and is said to be close to the Calcutta Mayor and state minister Firhad Hakim.

Without naming Khatun, Bapari even indicated that she acquired her school job after a special teaching post, that never existed before, was created upon intervention from the said Babu and that she draws salaries without attending work for a single day since her appointment in 2017.

Khatun’s husband, Arijit Das, who runs several businesses and is also the upa-pradhan of the Sija Kamalpur gram panchayat in Balagarh, has threatened to move court against Bapari on grounds of defamation.

“I have no qualms against the party. I will never say anything against our CM Mamata Banerjee or Abhishek Banerjee, the general of our party. They are the ones who elevated me to this position of legislator. It’s some of the small-time local workers who are considering themselves big leaders and are misusing their power to do all kinds of wrong things. I have raised my voice against these few,” Bapari stated last week in the wake of the public fallout.

With the party top brass choosing to stay mum when the cracks at the ground currently look unbridgeable, a section of political observers interpret this as ominous signs for the Trinamul in the run up to the 2024 general elections.