Kolkata: Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has started strengthening its organisational bases in West Bengal’s two minority-dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad in preparation to fight the 2026 Assembly elections.

The party has a special focus on Malda. The state leadership of AIMIM has already started announcing the names of the party’s block presidents and block vice-presidents in Malda to start the campaign process in the district.

This is a step to field candidates from select minority-dominated constituencies in the state in the crucial Assembly elections scheduled next year.

According to AMIM’s Malda district president Rezayul Karim, the party’s state leadership is confident of fielding candidates from all 12 Assembly constituencies in the district. He said that the issues to be highlighted by the party during the campaign for the 2026 elections will be both state-specific at the macro-level and district-specific at the micro-level.

While at the state-level, the issue to be highlighted will be the corruption in the current Trinamool Congress-ruled regime in West Bengal, the district-level issue will be the poor state of social infrastructure in Malda district, Karim said.

He said that the state party leadership is confident of shifting voters towards AIMIM from other parties in Malda.

Meanwhile, a state leader of the party said that besides Malda, the party also has plans to field candidates from selective Assembly constituencies in Malda-adjacent and minority-dominated Murshidabad district. However, it is yet to be decided on the exact number of Assembly constituencies in Murshidabad where AIMIM will be fielding candidates in 2026.

In the past, the Trinamool Congress leadership had attacked AIMIM and accused the latter of acting as a puppet of the BJP in elections by dividing the minority votes.

However, state AIMIM leader in West Bengal, Nabiul Ansari, has rejected the allegations of the state ruling party. According to him, in any election, the party fields candidates from constituencies where there are chances of victory and in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, the same theory will be applicable.