After a 4-0 victory in the Bengal Bypolls, which included winning two BJP seats, Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien in an interview to said the big message from the nationwide bypolls is “beyond Bengal, the BJP is beatable.”

The NDTV report said Derek also had a sharp message for Congress that “time is gone where a 23-year-old (Trinamool) is told by a 100-year-old grandmamma and grandpapa what to do”.

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“The BJP has to be defeated… The mindset has to change… that we are equal partners in the opposition. Just because we are 22 or 23-year-old TMC (Trinamool Congress) and somebody else is 100-year-old… Grandmamma and granddaddy cannot tell a 22-year-old energetic party, ready to take on (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and (Amit) Shah… we are youthful and energetic and we want to take the BJP on. Let’s work on this, rather than talk down on us,” Derek O’Brien told NDTV, without naming the Congress.

“We have the passion, the energy to take the BJP on. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool has been doing this consistently…” the NDTV report added.

Derek said that during the Bengal election this year, Trinamool fought on 294 seats while Congress and CPM together fought on their own and “got zero seats”.

In the recently conducted bypolls, Trinamool won two assembly seats — Dinhata and Santipur — from the BJP by huge margins and managed to keep control over Khardah and Gosaba.

After Trinamool won all four seats on Tuesday, Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien took to Twitter to say that three of the BJP’s candidates had not only lost the election but also lost their security deposit.

“BJP candidates lost their security deposit in three of the four seats today,” TMC’s Derek O’Brien said.

According to the NDTV report, Derek O’brien said: “Beyond Bengal, I think the message is that the BJP, Modi and Shah are beatable.”

“There are issues we are not talking about- look at the economy, look at the jobs, freedom of expression… These issues need to come to the fore and we should spend less time talking about opposition unity. Opposition unity is another chapter- it is more important for the opposition to bring these issues to the fore,” added the report by NDTV.

The Trinamool leader also spoke about the party’s aggressive push in other states and said: “Our simple message in Goa and Tripura is that we are not here for the sprint, but for the long run.”

The BJP had won 77 of the 292 seats in Bengal in the April-May assembly election. The Trinamool Congress had won 213 seats. The Trinamool’s tally has now gone up to 217 seats and the BJP’s is down to 75.