Beldanga (WB), Dec 22: West Bengal MLA Humayun Kabir on Monday floated a new outfit, Janata Unnayan Party, days after he was suspended by the TMC for laying the foundation stone for a Babri-style mosque in Murshidabad district.
Addressing a public meeting in Beladanga, Kabir said his mission is to oust Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from power in the assembly polls, which will be due in less than six months.
“Mamata Banerjee will not be sworn in as chief minister in 2026; she will be the ex-chief minister. She is no longer the same person I knew and is now beyond the reach of the common man,” he claimed.
“Our party will speak for the ‘aam aadmi’ of the state and their upliftment,” he said, adding that he consciously did not retain any remnant of the Congress or the Trinamool while naming the new outfit.
Kabir, the MLA of Bharatpur, named eight candidates that his new party will field in the 2026 assembly elections, and said he would himself contest from Rejinagar and Beldanga, both of which were won by the TMC in 2021.
“I will win from both the seats that I will be contesting from,” he declared, challenging the TMC to defeat him.
He launched his party’s manifesto and said his first preference for poll symbol would be ‘table’, on which he had contested the 2016 state polls as an Independent, provided he receives the Election Commission’s nod for it, while ‘twin roses’ will be his second choice.
He also unveiled the party’s flag, which has yellow, green and white.
Kabir announced two of his namesakes as the party candidates from the Bhagabangola and Raninagar seats. He named Manish Pandey for Murshidabad and Nisha Chatterjee for Ballygunge in south Kolkata.
Haji Ibrar Hossain was named for Kharagpur Rural in West Midnapore, Muskera Bibi for Baisnabnagar in Malda and Wahidur Rahaman for Harirampur in Dakshin Dinajpur.
“We can only tell you later how many seats we will be finally contesting,” he told the gathering.
He had earlier announced that he was intending to field candidates in 135 of the 294 seats in the state assembly.
The BJP alleged Kabir was working to help the TMC return to power.
“Kabir will not be a factor in the next assembly polls. He will face the drubbing of the electorate along with his old friend TMC, with which he is still in touch in a clandestine manner. Both Kabir and his new party will be rejected by the people of Bengal,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya claimed.
He claimed Kabir was attempting to split “BJP votes” in the assembly polls.
“In the wake of the situation in Bangladesh, people of Bengal will thwart Kabir’s attempts and elect a strong nationalist force like the BJP, only which can defeat fundamentalists,” he claimed.
TMC spokesperson Jayprakash Majumdar said such parties have been floated before and sunk into oblivion.
“It is nothing more than a communal provocation,” he said.
The TMC had suspended Kabir on December 4 after his announcement to build a Babri-style mosque triggered a massive row.
On December 6, the day the Babri Masjid was razed in Ayodhya in 1992, a defiant Kabir laid the foundation stone for the mosque at Rejinagar, creating a dust-up in state politics.
Kabir has had a tryst with most of the major political parties in the state over the last 10 years.
In 2015, he was “expelled” by the TMC for six years for criticising the CM and alleging that she was trying to make her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, the “king”.
He contested the 2016 assembly elections as an Independent from the Rejinagar seat, but lost to Congress. He subsequently joined the Congress, which then had a huge presence in the district, but switched to the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP fielded him as its candidate in the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat, and managed to secure the third spot after the TMC and Congress nominees. He then returned to the TMC and, in 2021, became the MLA of Bharatpur. (Agencies)
