Kolkata: The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) headed by Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday ruled out an alliance with suspended Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA Humayun Kabir, who laid the foundation stone of a mosque modelled on Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district on Saturday.
“As far our knowledge goes, Kabir is a member of the core team of Bengal’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari and the entire nation knows that Adhikari is a member of the core team of Union home minister Amit Shah,” AIMIM spokesperson Syed Asim Waqar told HT.
“Muslims of this country don’t have a destructive mindset. They are with people who build the nation. Owaisi Saab never helps those who want to destroy peace and communal harmony. The Muslims of Bengal know very well under whose instructions Kabir is working,” Waqar added.
Reacting to Waqar’s statement, Kabir said: “I don’t know what the AIMIM spokesperson has said but some Hyderabad people close to Owaisi contacted me. Owaisi, too, is called the BJP’s agent. These are part of politics. If Owaisi wants to contest polls in Bengal then he needs me. I don’t need him.”
Taking potshots at both Owaisi and Kabir, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said, “Many may aspire to contest polls in Bengal but will development, which Mamata Banerjee ensures, be on their agenda? Can they deliver that?”
The development took place hours after Kabir, who plans to launch his own party on December 22, claimed at the site of the proposed mosque that he has been invited to Hyderabad, where the AIMIM has won the Lok Sabha seat without a break since 1989.
Kabir was described as a “traitor working for the BJP” by chief minister Mamata Banerjee at a rally in Murshidabad on Thursday, hours after he was suspended.
“Owaisi has invited me to Hyderabad for talks. You may consider our alliance with AIMIM done,” Kabir told the media as many local villagers arrived with bricks and construction materials as donations for the mosque he has named Babri Masjid.
In 2020, when the AIMIM won five seats in the Bihar assembly polls and was accused by the Congress of splitting Muslim votes to help the BJP, Owaisi announced that his men would contest the Bengal polls in 2021. The plans failed and 21 AIMIM members joined the TMC in November 2020.
Although Kabir stuck to his decision to form a new party, he surprised people on Sunday by saying that he would continue as a TMC MLA instead of resigning from the state legislative assembly.
“Many of my people have urged me to continue. As an MLA, I issue certificates, which they need to apply for various government schemes,” he said.
Kabir, the MLA from Murshidabad’s Bharatpur constituency, is setting up the mosque at the district’s Beldanga area that was rocked by communal violence in April this year. Paramilitary forces are still deployed in the region under orders of the Calcutta high court.
To counter his move, Sakharabh Sarkar, a district BJP leader, performed a puja on Saturday and announced that he will build a Ram Mandir modelled after the one at Ayodhya in Berhampore.
Muslims comprise 66% of Murshidabad district’s population, Bengal’s highest, according to the 2011 census. Kabir claimed that his party will contest 135 of Bengal’s 294 assembly seats next year.
“There are at least 90 seats where the Muslim population varies between 42 and 82 % but the TMC has only 44 Muslim MLAs. Our community deserves more representation,” he claimed.
Kabir said his party can have the Congress, CPI(M) and the Indian Secular Front represented by its sole MLA Nawsad Siddiqui as allies as well.
Former state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who represented Murshidabad’s Berhampore Lok Sabha seat five times in a row before being defeated last year by TMC’s Yusuf Pathan, a former cricketer and Gujarat resident, targeted Kabir for making such statements.
“I beg to the people of Bengal with folded hands not to fall for this communal politics by BJP and TMC. If we don’t stop now then a day will come when there will be separate tea stalls for Hindus and Muslims in Murshidabad,” Chowdhury said.
“Mamata Banerjee is responsible for the destruction of Bengal’s communal fabric. Having treated Muslims as vote banks for years instead of ensuring their development, she is now spending money from the state exchequer to build temples in Digha and Siliguri and woo Hindu voters,” Chowdhury added.
No CPI(M) leader, including Bengal state secretary Md Salim, commented till Sunday evening on Kabir’s proposal for an electoral alliance.
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