All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday confirmed that his party will “definitely” contest the upcoming 2021 West Bengal Legislative Assembly Elections, adding that he had a talk with Bengal’s influential Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui regarding this.

Much to Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee’s added chagrin and discomfort, it has been confirmed that the AIMIM is going ahead with the decision to contest the upcoming assembly polls, under Siddiqui’s supervision.

The AIMIM chief’s visit to Furfura Sharif, however, evoked sharp reactions from the ruling TMC. “The AIMIM is nothing but a proxy of the BJP. Owaisi is well aware that Muslims here are mostly Bengali-speaking and would not support him. He is trying to forge ties with Abbas Siddiqui, but that will not yield any result. Muslims in Bengal stand firmly by Mamata Banerjee,” senior TMC leader and party MP Sougata Roy asserted.

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This was Owaisi’s first organizational meeting in Bengal after announcing his plan to contest the 2021 Assembly elections to be held in the state. Apart from Abbas Siddiqui, his relatives Naushad Siddiqui, Baizid Amin, and Sabir Ghaffar were also present during the discussion.

Siddiqui is a pirzada, or descendent of a pir. He, however, does not enjoy the backing of the whole Siddiqui family, as his uncle, Pirzada Tawha Siddiqi, a better-known name than Abbas himself, has criticized Abbas’s foray into politics saying that politics was not meant for spiritual leaders.

The AIMIM’s senior organizer in the state, Imran Solanki, had accompanied Owaisi to Furfura Sharif.

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Refuting the Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) repeated allegations that his party was going to create an advantageous situation for the BJP by dividing Muslim votes, Owaisi said, “This is a baseless allegation. We did not contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections here. How then did the BJP win 18 seats? It has become evident now that she can not resist the BJP, as we can see a series of TMC leaders joining the BJP.”

He also questioned Mamata Banerjee’s credibility in defending the interests of the Muslims. “Where was Mamata Banerjee when Gujarat was burning (in 2002)?” he asked in an evident reminder to the people on Mamata Banerjee’s alliance with the BJP at that time.

In one sense, Owaisi and Siddiqui may play a complementary role for each other. While Owaisi’s party was being accused by the TMC of being ‘outsiders’, Siddiqui would provide them with a Bengali face.

A deciding factor for nearly 100-110 seats in the state, the minorities, especially Muslims have acted as a bulwark of the TMC against its rivals till the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Prominent Muslim leaders in the state, nonetheless, have claimed that equations are likely to change with the entry of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).

According to a senior leader in the Hyderabad-based party, Owaisi has seen in West Bengal a fertile ground for his expansion plans, as Muslims constitute around 30 percent of the state’s population.

Of the 30 percent, however, at least 24 percent are Bengali-speaking Muslims. Elections to the 294 member West Bengal Assembly are likely to be held in April-May. In this election, Owaisi and Siddiqui joining hands could spell trouble for Mamata Banerjee by splitting the TMC’s Muslim vote bank, political observers have said.

In West Bengal, Muslims have traditionally stood by the mainstream, so-called secular parties. During the first six decades since Independence, the Muslims stood either by the Congress or the Left parties. Political outfits playing Muslim identity politics have failed to create any impression. Over the past 10 years, Muslims have mostly backed Mamata Banerjee’s party.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the TMC swept most of the areas dominated by Muslim population, except in parts of the districts of Malda and Murshidabad, where the Muslim votes got split between the TMC and the Congress.

According to Biswanath Chakraborty, a professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, this development was “certain to increase Mamata Banerjee’s headache.”

He said that the rise of Hindutva politics and the atmosphere around the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens had created space for Muslim identity politics. The TMC, however, said that the meeting between Owaisi and Siddiqui was a minor affair.

Siddiqullah Chowdhury, the library and mass education extension minister in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet, is also the state unit president of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, a pan-India organization of Muslim scholars. Chowdhury said that the two joining hands would do no harm to the TMC’s electoral prospects.

“Bengal needs no AIMIM. We are enough to deal with the BJP. Mamata Banerjee is the icon of communal harmony. Let Bengal deal with its own issues rather than being led to a disaster due to provocations coming in from Hyderabad,” Chowdhury said. The AIMIM is headquartered in Hyderabad.

Chowdhury added that just when the BJP was “trying to unify the Hindus against the Muslims” and the TMC was trying to keep the Hindus and Muslims together, Owaisi’s party was trying to serve the BJP’s interest by dividing the Muslims.

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness