Owning responsibility for the Bharatiya Janata Party's pathetic performance in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha by-election, state party president P S Sreedharan Pillai Tuesday resigned from the post saying he failed to check "hijacking" of party votes.

Announcing his decision at a press meet in Thiruvananthapuram, Pillai said he did not think it proper to remain in the post after "drastic fall" in BJP votes to 36,690 from the 2.28 lakh it polled in the constituency in the 2004 Parliament election.

Pillai said he had sent his resignation to BJP national president Lal Kishenchand Advani. Fresh troubles in the BJP's faction-riven state unit began to surface soon after the November 18 voting with party candidate C K Padmanabhan complaining that the BJP campaign was ineffective and that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadre did not work for him seriously.

The BJP's lacklustre electioneering had been a major campaign theme in the by-election right from the start with the Left Democratic Front accusing the United Democratic Front of having struck a clandestine vote deal with the saffron party.

The UDF had alleged that a chunk of BJP vote was "managed by LDF with the help of DIC(K) leader K Karunakaran".

The LDF retained the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat with Communist Party of India's Pannyan Raveendran trouncing V S Sivakumar of the Congress by a margin of 74,027 votes.

LDF retains Thiruvananthapuram