State minister and Trinamul leader Firhad Hakim on Tuesday tried to reach out to Congress supporters from the minority community in Malda ahead of the Bengal polls.

Hakim, who reached here on Tuesday, said at a party meeting: “Congress supporters should vote for us because their party leaders have joined hands with the CPM, the party responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Congress supporters in Malda.”

He took the name of Congress stalwart A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury, still considered the party’s tallest leader in the district. “Barkatda (as Khan Choudhury is known) has always said that the Congress will have to struggle against CPM till the last day. To fulfil his dream, it is time that those who have voted Congress for years now stand by us. It is only Trinamul that can thwart the BJP,” Hakim said.

Since Trinamul’s emergence, Mamata has always focussed on the minority vote bank of the state and her strategy has helped her to win in a number of elections.

However, unlike most other minority-dominated belts of Bengal, Trinamul has failed to draw support from a bulk of the minority population of Malda, a district with around 55 per cent minority population. Thousands of them are still believed to be with the Congress.

In all, Malda has 12 Assembly seats. In the 2016 polls, Trinamul had failed to win even one seat in the district. Trinamul could not bag either of the two Lok Sabha seats, Malda north and south, in 2019.

“It seems that Trinamul now wants to erode the support base of Congress in minority belts. There are at least eight Assembly seats in Malda where support of minorities decides the results,” said an observer, adding that the Trinamul leadership might have thought that was easier than trying to erode BJP’s Malda vote bank.