Pandey said that he tried to contact his predecessor

at least seven-eight times on phone between February 7-9 and left message with the former's aide with request for urgent meeting with him to discuss the formation of working committee, but Thakur neither called back or gave a time for such a discussion to take place between them. "I did discuss with other senior leaders and BJP ministers in the state government and obtained their views on the shape of the working committee," the 44 year-old BJP leader said. Thakur immediately countered his successor's charge and said that he was never contacted by the latter to discuss any issue, party-related or personal. "Pandey never contacted me either on phone or in person.... I would have had no problem in helping with advice if he had sought anything from me," the senior BJP leader said. Thakur had created a flutter in BJP circles last week by questioning the 'unilateral' manner of selection of a jumbo 174-member working committee team by his successor Mangal Pandey and alleged that the exercise was done by bypassing senior leaders and the core committee members. Besides, the new leadership did not accommodate various communities and senior functionaries in their team to cause heartburns in the rank and file, the former state unit BJP chief said and added in no uncertain terms that he will take up the matter with the national leadership for correction. Thakur said that the discontent brewing in the party over selection of the new working committee could have disastrous effect for the BJP in the 2014 general elections and the assembly polls a year later. The senior BJP leader, who was health minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, had indirectly blamed Sushil Kumar Modi for packing the working committee with his people as the list was finalised and released from his official residence and not from the party office. Modi is believed to have spiked Thakur's desire for renomination for a second term as the state unit chief last month and instead convinced the central leadership to make his protege - Mangal Pandey - as the new party chief in Bihar. The Deputy Chief Minister was reportedly not happy with the former BJP chief for his pro-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi remarks favouring the latter's candidature as the prime minister as they had not gone down well with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.