New Delhi:
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have rejected NRI businessman Anshuman Mishra's claims that he was offered a Rajya Sabha nomination by party president Nitin Gadkari, but serious differences within the party seem to be surfacing. There is discontentment among senior party leaders on the way Mr Gadkari handled the issue.
What's more disconcerting for the BJP is that there doesn't seem to be one united voice in the party on the allegations raised by Mr Mishra on a host of issues.
"Go ask him (Nitin Gadkari). Ask Gadkari ji and Rajnath ji, who gave him (Anshuman Mishra) support," senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi told reporters today when he was asked about allegations made by Mr Mishra.
Mr Joshi's outburst is the first indication of huge dissent against Mr Gadkari over his support to Mr Mishra for a Rajya Sabha seat.
Mr Gadkari is bound to face the heat as there was already simmering disquiet over how he ignored the party's consultative mechanism to induct tainted BSP leader BS Kushwaha ahead of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, and now the situation seems to have worsened for the BJP president over the fiasco over Mr Mishra.
Right after Mr Mishra's nomination for a seat in the Rajya Sabha, top leaders had revolted and blocked Mr Mishra's chances. From LK Advani to Sushma Swaraj, they all agreed that the entrepreneur's background and his status as an "outsider" in Jharkhand make him an unsuitable candidate.
However, after he dropped out of the race, the 37-year-old fired salvo at the BJP leaders including Mr Joshi, who was rattled by the London businessman's charge that he had funded the senior politician's poll campaigns in 2004 and 2009. The London businessman had claimed that he has been BJP's fund-raiser for over a decade. He also alleged that he had facilitated a meeting between Mr Joshi and corporate leaders being probed in the 2G scam.
(Read: Congress slams BJP over Mishra's claims)"He said things against Advani ji, Yashwant ji, leader of Opposition and now he is making charges against me. All this is because of not getting a party seat," Mr Joshi said today.
"The media should not pay too much attention to the baseless allegations made by him (Mr Mishra)," BJP's Rajya Sabha member and spokesperson Tarun Vijay said.
However, with the NRI businessmen targeting the BJP top leaders, a collective decision on the crisis seems remote. The party seems to be still deciding on how to confront the Mishra issue. There are audible murmurs in the party about Mr Mishra's past and present connecting to many party leaders. Some say attacking him will also raise uncomfortable questions for the party leadership on who propped Mr Mishra and on whose orders the Jharkhand BJP nominated him.
But the Opponents of the BJP are already raising several questions.
"The allegations which have been put (by Mr Mishra) seem to be very serious....We need to seriously look into the matter...When someone puts allegations like this they cannot be ignored....It is a very serious allegation," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said today.