Kolkata: Dismissing speculation that Saradha scam could have an adverse impact on Trinamool Congress's performance in coming municipal and Assembly elections, party General Secretary Mukul Roy today said people continued to repose faith on Mamata Banerjee and TMC would win the polls.
“Elections were held earlier also when all these issues came to the fore, but it had no effect on the party's performance. The party won 34 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in last year's Lok Sabha election,” Roy said. The TMC MP was responding to a question from reporters on the sidelines of a programme to observe the party's foundation day.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation and 80 other municipal bodies across the state are scheduled to go to polls in 2015, which is seen as a dress rehearsal for major political parties before the Assembly election due mid-next year.
Roy pointed out that even in the by-elections to two Assembly constituencies in September last year; it was only TMC which had been able to increase its vote share compared to other parties.
While TMC's Nayana Bandyopadhyay won the Chowringhee Assembly seat, party candidate and former India football skipper Dipendu Biswas lost to BJP's Samik Bhattacharya by over 1,000 votes in Basirhat South.
“During the Lok Sabha polls, BJP led by over 30,000 votes in the Basirhat (South) segment, but we recovered more than 28,000 of that,” Roy said.
Roy's assertion came when BJP is making inorads in the state and the Saradha scam saw some TMC leaders, including Transport Minister Madan Mitra, summoned and arrested by central agencies.
