TMC suspends MLA for planning to rebuild 'Babri Masjid' in Bengal, accuses him of working for BJP

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress does not practice communal politics, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Thursday after her Trinamool Congress suspended one of its legislators, Humayun Kabir, who recently put the party in a tight spot by announcing his plan to build a Babri Masjid in his constituency.

“We don’t practice communal politics. We are firmly opposed to it,” Mamata said, addressing a rally in Baharampur, shortly after the TMC announced the suspension of Kabir, who was elected from nearby Bharatpur. Without directly naming the just-suspended Member of Legislative Assembly, the TMC supremo said that some “traitors” had taken money from her party’s arch-rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, to stoke communal tension, polarise voters, and ensure an advantage for the saffron party in the upcoming assembly elections in the state.

Kabir was at the venue of the TMC’s rally in Baharampur but left soon after news spread that Mamata’s close aide and a senior minister in the state’s TMC government, Firhad Hakim, had announced at a news conference the party’s decision to suspend the MLA election from Bharatpur. “I will resign from the party tomorrow and launch a new party on December 22,” said the legislator, who had triggered a controversy by announcing his plan to lay the foundation stone of a new “Babri Masjid” in his constituency on Saturday, the anniversary of the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.

His plan exposed the TMC to sharper criticism from the BJP, which had already been accusing Mamata and her party of turning the Muslims of the state into a vote-bank and pursuing a policy of appeasing the community.

Baharampur and nearby Bharatpur are part of Murshidabad, a district which witnessed communal violence on April 11 and 12 this year, when the protests against the new Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, had turned violent.

Mamata on Thursday invoked Murshidabad’s pluralistic legacy and warned people about attempts to disturb the communal harmony ahead of the 2026 assembly polls.

“Some people take money and serve the BJP before the polls. Remember, they are your enemies,” the chief minister said at the rally in Baharampur, tacitly hitting out at her party’s just-suspended legislator. She also warned about “betrayers” in every religious community.

Hakim earlier told newspersons that Kabir would no longer have any relation with the TMC. He stressed that the TMC had no space for “politics of division over religion”.

Kabir, visibly angry over his suspension from the party, said that the new party he would launch would field candidates in about 135 of the 294 assembly constituencies in West Bengal in the elections expected to be held in April-May next year.

He cited the TMC government’s financial assistance to the organisers of the Durga Puja festivals in West Bengal and the recent construction of a temple of Lord Jagannath in the coastal town of Digha with funds from the state exchequer and questioned the secular credentials of the party and its supremo.

Kabir has long been an irritant for the TMC. His comments against his party colleagues prompted the TMC top brass to issue notices. He has been running a campaign against Apurba Sarkar, the district chief of the TMC, and even defied the party leaders to continue the tirade.