Kolkata, Feb. 9 -- With smaller opposition parties working to join hands to form anti-TMC and anti-BJP groupings with an eye on the Muslim votes in the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections, there could be a multi-way split of minority community electorate which is estimated to be at least 30% of the state's 91.27 million (as per 2011 Census). The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has been getting the lion's share of the Muslim votes in the eastern state ever since the Mamata Banerjee-led party overthrew the Left Front in 2011. The possibility of new political alignments emerged on Thursday when the Congress, which once controlled the Muslim-majority districts of Murshidabad and Malda, decided to drop its old ally, the CPI(M), and contest on its own. The TMC has repeatedly rejected any pre-poll truck with the grand old party in West Bengal. The development came weeks after Humayun Kabir, TMC's Bharatpur legislator from Murshidabad, was suspended for laying the foundation stone of a mosque modelled on Ayodhya's Babri Masjid. Going ahead, Kabir formed his own outfit, the Janata Unnayan Party, and held talks with CPI(M) state secretary Mohd Salim to form an alliance against TMC and the Bharatiya Janata Party. "In Murshidabad and Malda, our alliance with the Congress increased the opposition vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. We even defeated TMC in 2023 in the Sagardighi assembly bypoll in Murshidabad. TMC later persuaded our winner to switch camps," Salim told HT on Friday. As allies in the 2021 state polls, the Congress and Left could not win any seat in the 294-member legislative assembly but Salim said the alliance symbolised a secular alternative. The only non-BJP opposition member in the assembly, Indian Secular Front (ISF) leader Nawsad Siddiqui, declared last week that he is open to an alliance with the Left and "like-minded" forces. "TMC wants the 70:30 binary to continue while we want all secular forces to come together. We will do our best to ensure that there is no split in votes. It seems the Congress doesn't want that but its workers at the grassroots are not anti-Left," Salim added. Kabir claimed that he considers no party, including Asaduddin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), as untouchable in the battle ahead. "Those who want to keep BJP out of power and counter TMC should come under one umbrella. No party, including AIMIM, is untouchable. A big front is coming up," Kabir told HT. AIMIM's Bengal unit president Imran Solanki said, "We have got in touch with several parties this year to formulate a strategy." Muslim voters can influence poll results in at least 120 of Bengal's 294 seats, according to surveys by the BJP and TMC....