TMC won because of Mamata's clean image: BJP

Kolkata, May 19 The BJP today paid a compliment to Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee saying that her party's landslide victory in the Assembly election in West Bengal was because of her "clean image".

"Irrespective of various allegations of corruption against its leaders and ministers, the TMC managed such a big victory because of the clean and honest image of Mamata Banerjee. There has been no allegations of corruption directly against her," BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said.

Ghosh has won from the Kharagpur-Sadar constituency by defeating his nearest rival Congress's Gyan Singh Sohanpal, the oldest candidate in fray at 91, who lost this time after 10 stints as MLA from the constituency. The BJP for the first time won Kharagpur Sadar in West Midnapore, Baishabnagar in Malda and Madarihat in Alipurduar.

"We are happy. We had won only one seat in a by-election in 2014. Our vote share had gone up to 17 per cent after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. But then it went down as we had no proper organisation to support it. But in the last two years we slowly built our organisation and these three seats (we won this time) are result of that hard work," Ghosh said. He pointed out that the BJP had emerged second on seven seats and the vote share too went up to around 10 per cent.

Commenting on allegation by CPI(M) state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra that the TMC and the BJP had a "secret understanding", Ghosh said, "Those who have lost the polls and have come third are now busy making excuses to cover up their failure."

PTI