New Delhi, July 23 :     Trouble had been brewing for quite some time between Ram Jethmalani and attorney-general Soli Sorabjee. In Pune, Jethmalani today lashed out at Sorabjee, accusing him of machinations that led to his resignation. Sorabjee denied the allegations strongly. The BJP government refused to involve the attorney-general in the Jethmalani resignation episode. He paid a price for his own errors, especially for his regular face-offs with Chief Justice A.S. Anand, the highest quarters in the capital suggested. Jethmalani, who clammed up last evening after faxing his resignation to Delhi, today directly accused Sorabjee before news agencies. 'You are the singlemost important factor responsible for the resignation,' he said in his hard-hitting style. He added that Sorabjee had let him down by not defending him properly in the Supreme Court during the hearing on the Srikrishna Commission inquiry report on Friday. The former law minister even suggested that Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee had been weak enough to choose a 'pliant attorney-general' ahead of a 'no-nonsense law minister'. He was 'unhappy' with Vajpayee's choice. Jethmalani was dissatisfied with the treatment meted out to him in Race Course Road in recent months. He was not consulted on most tricky legal issues despite being the law minister. Information and broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley and Sorabjee frequented Race Course Road more than the minister himself. Jethmalani said 'constant pinpricks' from the attorney-general led to his exit. 'I cannot stay in the Cabinet with an attorney-general like this. Right from the day I became law minister, he had started giving me pinpricks.' Saying the attorney-general had failed him in his duties, Jethmalani added: 'Sorabjee should have stood up and told the court that my minister is not here and he should be accorded a chance to explain his stand. The attorney-general almost encouraged the chief justice to make all those observations.' He explained that there was nothing new or unknown about the friction with the attorney-general. 'It started from the day I became law minister and things continued to deteriorate. I was very unhappy with the manner in which the attorney-general function,' Jethmalani emphasised. The former law minister cautioned that he had quite a few cards up his sleeve and that he may reveal them in due course. He said he been long 'unhappy with the Prime Minister' and that he 'had many disappointments' in his dealing with either South Block or Race Course Road. But he was not going to say anything now. 'My resignation had nothing to do with the observations of the Chief Justice or the case against Bal Thackeray,' he said - a point which does not have many takers in Delhi's power circles. Sorabjee was equally caustic. He said the law minister had an 'inexhaustible store of pinpricks' and was himself to blame for his ouster. He said: 'Jethmalani knows the reasons for his resignation. He did not require my help for his exit...' According to Sorabjee, a recent examples of the pinpricks was the 'intemperate criticism of the Chief Justice of India and the Supreme Court in his press statement issued after the court proceedings.' The attorney-general also disputed Jethmalani's insistence that he had not defended the law minister in court. 'His account is incorrect,' he said. 'In fact, I retrieved the situation by reiterating the government's previous stand on the affidavit and persuaded the court not to record its oral observation in the order.' The three-member bench hearing the Srikrishna Commission case had only made a verbal statement, saying the Centre appeared to be speaking in many voices.