The BJP’s lone lawmaker in Kerala has claimed the Congress helped him win the Nemom Assembly seat in 2016, handing ammunition to the ruling Left which is being accused of a deal with the BJP over three seats for the April 6 state elections.

O. Rajagopal told the pro-Left Kairali TV on Thursday the Congress had supported him in 2016 because it knew it was going to lose the election anyway and wanted the state to have a lawmaker from the party that governed the country.

“A lot of Congress supporters voted for me,” the 91-year-old, whose victory in 2016 made him the first BJP candidate to win an Assembly or Lok Sabha election from Kerala, said.

“They (the Congress) were anyway (going to be) the main Opposition party and one seat wouldn’t have made any difference,” Rajagopal, who is not contesting this time, added.

“So (they would have thought) a man named Rajagopal has been trying for a long time and it’s good to have in the state Assembly a person from the party that rules India.”

Rajagopal said senior Congress leaders knew about the arrangement.

He absolved the Left of having helped him: “No, the communists won’t do that. They wanted power.”

Rajagopal has made back-to-back claims about secret Congress support for BJP candidates since a Sangh parivar veteran, peeved at being denied a nomination, on Tuesday alleged a Left-BJP deal over three seats, embarrassing the ruling front.

On Wednesday, Rajagopal had told another TV channel that the Congress, its ally Indian Union Muslim League and the BJP had worked together to defeat Left candidates in the 1991 Assembly polls. The Congress had wrested power from the Left in that election, winning 90 of the state’s 140 seats.

Rajagopal did not say how many seats the 1991 understanding covered but said it helped the BJP win votes in several constituencies and eventually aided its growth in the state.

“There was a time when we thought: why waste our votes since we were not going to win? So we wanted to defeat the communists (by joining hands with the Congress and the IUML). Now the BJP has grown,” he said.

On Tuesday, R. Balashankar, a parivar insider with close ties to the BJP central leadership and the RSS, had alleged a BJP-CPM deal to help state BJP president K. Surendran win the Konni seat.

He alleged the BJP had in exchange fielded weak candidates from Chengannur and Aranmula. Balashankar is understood to have been disappointed at being denied nomination from Chengannur.

Balashankar’s allegation has put the CPM in a spot, with speculation already swirling about a secret Left-BJP understanding over many seats.

While the CPM has denied the allegation, the UDF has used it to attack the ruling front.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday seized on Rajagopal’s claims and hit out at the media.

“Many of you are pretending not to have heard what Rajagopal said. This is not news for many media outlets,” he told a questioner at a news conference in Malappuram.

“He’s the person who benefited from Congress votes in Nemom, and said they (the BJP) had an understanding with the Congress.”

Vijayan dismissed Balashankar’s allegation of a CPM-BJP understanding at Konni. “The last time we defeated the current BJP president in Konni,” he said.

The CPM had won a by-election from Konni in 2019, pushing Surendran to third position.