A simmering feud between two councillors from the ruling Trinamool Congress dried up the taps in a Kasba slum for days before Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim intervened.

The Trinamool leadership would like to nip the issue in the bud much before the poll bugle sounds for the next year's Assembly elections. Insiders say trouble within the party fold runs deeper than the water supply pipelines.

Around 60 families in Kasba’s Rajdanga Purbapara went without water for over a week, following which they complained to ward 108 councillor and borough X chairman, Sushanta Ghosh.

“For almost a week we went without water, though there are four taps provided by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation near our house,” said Champa Naskar, a resident of the slum. “The water supply was stopped because the councillor decided to switch to a new connection.”

The new connection that Naskar referred to is a large hole in the ground with two taps jutting out of the ground. There are no steps leading to the tap making it difficult to climb down and up with the water-filled containers.

Ram Narayan Sharma, a carpenter who lives on Rajdanga Main Road, said, “The water supply was irregular and slow for the last few days. We have to depend on the taps on the main road as those inside the slum barely function.”

People like Naskar and Sharma are caught in a battle for area domination between Ghosh and Lipika Manna, the Trinamool councillor for ward 107 which was till 2021 represented by Ghosh.

It was alleged the people whose homes got affected were supporters of Ghosh.

In 2010, Ghosh, who was once close to the now-jailed former Trinamool heavyweight Partha Chatterjee, won from ward 107 in the municipal polls. He retained the seat in 2015. When the next KMC elections took place Ghosh was moved to the adjacent ward, but continued to exert influence in his former ward, which the followers of Manna saw as interference.

“Ghosh was removed to the adjoining ward since ward 107 became reserved for women. He still has his men in this ward and that has been a prickly issue between him and Manna,” said a Trinamool leader from south Kolkata.

Days after the Trinamool’s sweep in the Lok Sabha elections in Bengal, supporters of both Ghosh and Manna were allegedly involved in hurling bombs at each other in Rajdanga and Indu Park localities in Kasba. On June 16 last year, Trinamool supporters belonging to both the camps were arrested and both councillors were warned by the party leadership.

“There are a lot of commercial and construction activities going on in the Kasba area, especially off the Eastern Metropolitan bypass as well as the Rasbehari Avenue-EM bypass connector, which has made the area cash-rich as well as volatile,” said a Trinamool leader. “Didi has warned time and again. The leaders obey her orders for a few days and then things go back to the same till she intervenes again.”

A group of the slum-dwellers wrote to Ghosh some days ago after which he took up the matter with mayor Hakim.

“I don’t know why the water supply was stopped,” Ghosh said. “When I informed the mayor about the hardship that the people were facing while temperatures are soaring high, he ordered for the supply to be restored immediately.”

Councillor Manna denied the allegations against her. “I changed the location of the taps to make them accessible to more people. It was not my intention to deprive any person of water,” she said.

The ward 107 residents affected by the water supply disruption claimed they hardly saw the councillor in their area.

“Sushanta da actually got some work done here, roads, water supply, streetlight. The new councillor hardly ever visits us to listen to our problems,” said Mithu Naskar, a local resident.

BJP councillor Sajal Ghosh said the common people were suffering because of Trinamool.

“They are always fighting among themselves. Even on the night before July 21 (one of the most important days in the Trinamool’s calendar commemorating the killing of 16 Youth Congress workers killed during the Left rule], they were fighting. All they ever do is put up large hoardings ignoring the basic needs of the people,” the BJP councillor said.