BERHAMPORE/KOLKATA: Humayun Kabir on Sunday said he was ready to form an alliance with Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the 2026 Bengal assembly elections. Speaking to reporters, Kabir said he was in touch with AIMIM neta Akbaruddin Owaisi’s personal assistant and while AIMIM wants him to join the party, he prefers an alliance. AIMIM has not commented on these remarks.Kabir’s comments come 24 hours after he laid the foundation for a ‘Babri Masjid-styled mosque’ in Murshidabad’s Rejinagar on Saturday. He further said he would announce his own political party on Dec 22.While Kabir had earlier said he would resign as Trinamool MLA on Dec 17, in a fresh turnaround on Sunday, he said, “People of Bharatpur have elected me as their MLA and they would be in trouble if I were to resign now. So, I have decided to continue.”

Kabir entered public life with the Youth Congress in the early 1990s and won Rejinagar in 2011 as a Congress candidate. A year later, he switched to Trinamool and was rewarded with a cabinet berth. Three years on, he was expelled for six years by Trinamool. He contested the 2016 Assembly polls as an Independent and lost. In 2018, he switched to BJP. In 2019, he contested and lost the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat. When the six-year expulsion expired, he returned to the Trinamool in time for the 2021 polls and won from Bharatpur.Trinamool said how could someone who contested elections on a BJP ticket in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, campaigned with Narendra Modi’s photographs and publicly embraced BJP leaders, posture as a self-styled “champion for Babri Masjid”.While laying out his election plans, Kabir said, “I will form an alliance with Owaisi. CPM and ISF are ready for an alliance. We will fight 135 seats. I will also leave 10 seats for Congress because Adhir (Chowdhury) has mass value in Murshidabad.” His claims on ISF, CPM and Congress, however, were immediately debunked by the parties.ISF’s Bhangar MLA Naushad Siddique said he hadn’t spoken to Kabir and that there was “no question of an alliance”. “He had made a derogatory comment about Hindus. He must withdraw the statement before we even speak to him” .While CPM state secretary Md Salim said he hasn’t spoken to anyone on seat-sharing, Congress’s Adhir Chowdhury said, “I request the people of Murshidabad to not indulge in any effort to divide people along religious lines. This binary may help Trinamool and BJP but not the man on the street.”Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, slamming Kabir, said, “I am a Hindu but my conscience did not allow the Babri Masjid desecration in 1992. Where was his conscience when he joined BJP? In this politics of dissidence, he is using religious polarisation to achieve certain political goals for someone. He may have won some elections but has also lost several. People have seen through him in the past and will do so again.“