evidence: The chance of Muslim votes getting divided first surfaced when in 2019 AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi announced that his party would contest the 2021 Assembly election in Bengal. A wary Trinamool immediately went on the offensive, calling Owaisi an "agent of the BJP" and warning the State’s Muslim voters against a "party from Hyderabad" trying to buy their votes. Mamata Banerjee’s increasing frustration over Owaisi’s imminent entry into Bengal politics is often revealed in her outbursts at election rallies. "The BJP is going to take the Hindu votes, and he will take the Muslim votes, and will I be left eating kanchkola ?" she said on one occasion. ( Kanchkola , literally meaning green plantain, is a Bengali metaphor denoting "nothing".) An additional worry for the Trinamool is that the five Assembly seats that the AIMIM won in the recently concluded Bihar Assembly election are adjacent to several Muslim-majority constituencies in north Bengal, including those in Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur districts. "They take money from the BJP and work for them, as we saw in the Bihar elections and other elections," Mamata Banerjee said, taking a dig at Owaisi’s wins in Bihar.