Reacting to a statement by Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde that the BJP was not to be blamed for the defeat of Sena candidate Kanhaiyalal Gidwani in the Council polls, Gidwani today held Munde ``solely and wholly responsible for betraying not just me, but also Sena chief Bal Thackeray and BJP leader Pramod Mahajan''.

Munde had claimed that had the Sena taken the BJP into confidence about an additional candidate, they might have succeeded in ensuring Gidwani's victory. Gidwani has, however, disputed this claim stating that Munde deliberately defied the party line just to ``teach a few lessons, as he thought, to the Sena leadership''.

According to him at a meeting of legislators of both parties along with Indpendents supporting the Sena-BJP Government in the State, bothThackeray and Mahajan had decided that Gidwani would be allotted the votes of the independents that would have been enough to ensure that he sailed through the elections. However, this decision was surreptitiously changed behind their backs unilaterally by Munde, Gidwani said. He charged Munde with deliberately withholding the surplus votes of 24 Independents in an attempt at one-upmanship with the Sena. ``Had these 24 votes been diverted to me, we would have managed to upstage the Congress and not just gain an additional seat but also secure majority in the Upper House,'' Gidwani added.