West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has warned Humayun Kabir that no mosque named after Babar will get a building plan approved or be allowed to be built. The warning came after Kabir announced that he would lay the foundation stone of a new Babri Masjid in Beldanga on December 6.

Adhikari was blunt. “If you build a mosque in Babar’s name, the plan will not be passed and no permission will be given to build it,” he said, making clear the state would not treat the project as a routine construction matter.

A threat to the highway, and a warning to the administration. Kabir had not only announced the foundation ceremony. He also reportedly threatened to block National Highway 34 and pressed the administration on the issue. Adhikari said that if Kabir went ahead with that plan, it would not go well for him. He added that anyone trying to shut down the national highway on December 6 would have to face the consequences.

The chief minister appealed to Kabir directly, asking him not to build a mosque in Babar’s name. The message was simple: drop the name, drop the blockade, and the state would not stand in the way of worship. The combination of a naming dispute and a road blockade threat is what turned a local announcement into a full-blown political confrontation.

Cash found at a TMC office in Diamond Harbour. In the same press engagement, Adhikari turned his fire on the Trinamool Congress. He cited the case of more than Rs 1.02 crore in cash recovered from the party office of the Trinamool Congress in Diamond Harbour.

He alleged that state revenue, which should have gone into the government treasury, was instead being routed to TMC party offices. He said police had already gathered evidence and that strict action would be taken against the people responsible at the right time. The claim is the chief minister’s own; the source coverage does not include a response from the TMC.

The revenue numbers that set off the alarm. Adhikari built his case on figures. He said the state’s revenue collection between April 1 and October 31, 2024, stood at Rs 37,281 crore. That, he said, was roughly Rs 4,000 crore more than normal collection for the same period.

Then he asked the question that he clearly wanted the public to sit with. “No new stone or sand mine has been auctioned in the state, so how did this extra revenue get collected?” he said.

He went further with projections. If such an amount had been gathered in just six months, he argued, the extra collection over a full 12 months would reach between Rs 7,000 crore and Rs 8,000 crore. Using the same logic, he said, roughly Rs 4,000 crore in additional recovery had also taken place last year.

Where, he asked, did the money go? Adhikari’s answer was pointed. He said the money went to a person and his associates who had been assigned the job of collecting money for the family of the former chief minister. He then claimed that this stolen revenue had been sent abroad.

These are serious allegations, and they came from the chief minister without any independent verification in the material available here. What is documented is what he said: an alleged gap between expected and actual revenue, a cash recovery at a party office, and a direct accusation that public money had been diverted and moved out of the country.

Why this matters beyond one district. The two issues are being pushed together in one political message. On one side, a religious site named after a Mughal emperor, and a call for a highway blockade that the chief minister says will be met with consequences. On the other, a revenue and cash story that he says points to a political party’s offices. Each claim is strong on its own. Put side by side, they are being used to frame the opposition as a source of public disorder and financial wrongdoing.

For residents of Beldanga and the surrounding stretch of National Highway 34, the immediate question is practical. A planned December 6 protest on a national highway would disrupt traffic, and the state has now made clear it will not approve a mosque bearing the Babar name. Anyone following the story will be watching whether the threat of a blockade is carried out, and how the administration responds if it is.

The coming weeks will decide whether these claims move from speeches into case files. Police have been cited as holding evidence on the cash recovery, and the chief minister has promised action. Until those steps are on the record, the public is left with the loudest version of the story, delivered by the man who controls the state machinery that will investigate it.