Thiruvananthapuram, May 27 (IANS): Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala on Monday said that it was Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's style of functioning that routed the Left in the Kerala Lok Sabha elections.

Speaking to the media after attending the first Congress-led UDF meeting after its election victory, Chennithala said: "Vijayan gave a new theory that they did all the hard work campaigning against the BJP and its benefit was reaped by the Congress. Not even a single soul here will ever believe this. All of us know that the verdict was against Vijayan's style of functioning.

"The Vijayan government has been wiped out but he says that he will continue with his style of functioning. We also wish that he does that so it makes things easy for us (in the next Assembly elections)," he said.

Reeling out statistics, he said this was the worst defeat of the Left in terms of vote share.

"Generally, the difference between the Left and us is very narrow but this time they got 15 per cent less votes than the UDF (47 per cent). In 2004, when we got just one seat, the difference was seven per cent.

"This time, we got more than 24 lakh votes more than the Left and this shows that the Vijayan government has lost the confidence of the people," added Chennithala.