Kolkata, Jan 6 (NIE): A day after suggesting that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has the quality to become the prime minister of the country, state BJP president Dilip Ghosh made a U-turn Sunday saying he made the remark in jest.

“On Saturday, when reporters asked me whether I would like to make any comment on Mamata Banerjee, I just extended my best wishes to her. Whatever I said about her prime ministership was just a joke. I was joking as it was her birthday,” Ghosh was quoted as saying by PTI.

While extending his birthday wishes to Banerjee, Ghosh had on Saturday said, “I extend my good wishes to her on her birthday… Because on her success, the fate of West Bengal is dependent. She needs to stay healthy, because if there is any chance of a Bengali Prime Minister or a Prime Minister from Bengal, she has a possibility.” Ghosh later said that he was speaking about a “distant future”, and reiterated that Narendra Modi will become the Prime Minister again.

The Congress, however, saw Ghosh’s remark as some kind of an understanding between BJP and TMC. “The statement reflects two things — a covert understanding between the BJP and the TMC, and that attempts to forge federal fronts are ploys to divide the opposition,” said Abdul Mannan, senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said the “tacit understanding between the TMC and the BJP is now out in the open”. “We have been saying this for a long time that the TMC and the BJP are playing a fixed political match in the state. Now the state BJP president himself has given a proof of it with his remarks,” CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty said.

Maintaining that she does not know the context in which Ghosh made the remarks, BJP Rajya Sabha MP from West Bengal Roopa Ganguly said, “Narendra Modi is our PM. I will not accept Mamata Banerjee and the TMC, who have murdered our workers, to lead the country.”