KOLKATA: The Calcutta high court on Friday declined to stop an event organised by a suspended Trinamool Congress (TMC) lawmaker to lay the foundation stone for a mosque modelled on Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid in Bengal’s Murshidabad district, but directed the state police to take adequate steps to maintain law and order at the spot, lawyers who attended the hearing said.
Humayun Kabir, the MLA from Murshidabad’s Bharatpur constituency, has announced his plan to build the mosque in the district’s Beldanga area which would be modelled on the Babri Masjid demolished in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. The Beldanga area was rocked by communal violence in April this year. Central police forces are still deployed in the region on orders of the Calcutta high court.
Senior TMC leader Firhad Hakim announced Kabir’s suspension from the party on Thursday, declaring that his conduct amounted to gross indiscipline at a time when TMC is trying to maintain peace and communal harmony in Bengal. Later, addressing a rally in Murshidabad, chief minister Mamata Banerjee described Kabir as a “traitor working for the Bharatiya Janata Party”.
Lawyer Sabyasachi Chatterjee, who appeared for the petitioner in the high court on Friday, said the petition was heard by a division bench led by acting chief justice Sujoy Paul, which underscored that the responsibility for maintaining law and order rested with the state government.
“We had prayed to the court for a stay to ensure that no such activity leads to communal disharmony or poses danger to citizens,” Chatterjee added.
The petition complained that the MLA had been making “filthy and derogatory statements and hate speech against a community, which causes breach of public tranquillity. Such kind of statements and hate speech over social media and YouTube news portal, being a member of the legislative assembly, may break the communal harmony of our state as well as our country,” it said.
During Friday’s hearing in the high court, state advocate general Kishor Dutta told the court that an adequate number of police personnel had already been deployed at Beldanga to keep the peace.
Kabir welcomed the court order.
“This is democracy’s victory. Why should there be any law and order problem? We will not let anything happen. There won’t be any political speech. Two clerics have been flown down from Saudi Arabia to recite holy texts from the Quran,” said Kabir.
The lawmaker has declared that he will exit the TMC and form his own party later in the month, which will contest at least 135 of Bengal’s 294 seats in the 2026 assembly polls.
Kabir began his political career with the Congress in 1983, winning Murshidabad’s Rejinagar seat in 2011 before joining the TMC and becoming a minister. The TMC expelled him for six years in 2015 for anti-party activities. He unsuccessfully contested the Rejinagar seat as an independent candidate in 2016.
Kabir joined the BJP in 2018 and unsuccessfully contested the Murshidabad Lok Sabha seat in 2019. He returned to TMC in 2018 but won the Bharatpur seat as an independent candidate in 2021.
Kabir claimed after his suspension that he had spoken with Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel, a leader of the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) and also state CPI(M) secretary Md Salim to discuss the possibility of an alliance for the state elections next year.
Salim and the CPI(M) leadership have not commented on Kabir’s claim. TMC leaders alleged that Kabir was trying to help the BJP by splitting Muslim votes that helped the ruling party in recent polls.
TMC state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar told HT that the state government will take appropriate measures as directed by the court.
“If the state thinks there will be a law and order problem, then it will take appropriate measures. In a way, the high court has said that the state has the right to take any measure,” said Majumdar
Asked whether those measures could go to the extent of stopping the event from taking place, Majumdar said: “If a public event has to take place, then it needs permission from the police and the administration. If there is no permission, the police may, in due course of time, stop the programme.”
