Dilip Ghosh said, "We accept the bypoll mandate"
West Bengal BJP President Dilip Ghosh said on Saturday that the party's failure to take forward its success in the Lok Sabha elections to the recent assembly bypolls in the state was due to the lack of experience.
In the bypolls, ruling Trinamool Congress won all the three assembly seats of Karimpur, Kaliagunj and Khargapur Sadar relegating BJP to the second position.
Mr Ghosh had himself been an MLA from Kharagpur Sadar seat and the bypoll was held there after he contested and won from Midnapore Lok Sabha seat.
Speaking to reporters in Kolkata, Mr Ghosh said "We will analyse the reasons for the failure in the bypolls. We lacked experience although our workers had the right enthusiasm. So we could not take our success in the Lok Sabha polls forward as we lost in all the three bypoll seats".
Defending BJP's performance in the by-election, he said it should be kept in mind that its result does not have any relation with the Lok Sabha or assembly elections. "Our workers had worked with vigour and energy," he said.
"Our aim is to prepare for the 2021 assembly polls. In the last Lok Sabha polls, we had won 18 seats, one less than what we had aimed for. The Trinamool Congress had won 22 seats though its supremo Mamata Banerjee had declared that it will win all the 42 (LS) seats," he said.
"We have now 18 MPs and four MLAs in West Bengal, which shows that BJP has considerable strength in the state ... BJP is not far behind. We accept the bypoll mandate," Dilip Ghosh said.
Asked whether the NRC issue has rocked the BJP's boat in the bypolls, Mr Ghosh said, "People of the state have been misled by the TMC which had created an atmosphere of fear. We will go to the people and find out where our fault lay".
BJP president Amit Shah has already said that the Centre will bring in the Citizenship Amendment Bill to grant citizenship to Hindu, Jain, Parsi, Sikh and Christian refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Aghanistan, he added.