New Delhi, March 25: BJP president Nitin Gadkari finally defended his party colleagues against Anshuman Mishra’s allegations, saying they were “baseless and misleading”.

He said the NRI businessman’s “motivated and selective” tirade against Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha, L.K. Advani and others were “nothing but an expression of frustration” over his failure to make it to the Rajya Sabha.

Mishra’s candidacy as an Independent for the Rajya Sabha election from Jharkhand was supported by several BJP MLAs, who signed his nomination papers. Off-the-record, they said they had acted on “instructions from the top” but refused to say who had issued the diktat.

Party sources pointed at Gadkari. After the brouhaha raised by senior leaders, including Advani, Sinha and Shanta Kumar, at a parliamentary party meeting last week, the BJP had to recant its decision and officially order the Jharkhand MLAs to not support Mishra and abstain from voting in the elections.

Bereft of the BJP’s backing, Mishra withdrew from the race but not before firing a fusillade of charges against the party brass.

In his statement this evening, Gadkari urged the BJP workers to “ignore Mishra’s deliberate attempt to create confusion by spreading falsehoods”.

A source said: “There was huge confusion among the cadres on whether Mishra’s earlier nomination was endorsed by the president. The damage was done. It was felt that Gadkari must step forward and clarify the misgivings. Also, he couldn’t allow a rank outsider, who was never ever associated with the BJP, to start canards against the top echelon.”

In his statement, Gadkari implored the media to not take cognisance of Mishra’s “wild” allegations against his colleagues.