Panaji, Dec 29 (IANS): Amid allegations against former Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar of working against BJP's candidates in the recently conducted Zilla Panchayat polls, the ruling party's president has warned party workers against washing dirty linen in public.

The allegations surfaced after the president of the party's Mandrem block Madhu Parab claimed that Parsekar, a former MLA from the Mandrem Assembly constituency had sabotaged the campaigns of two BJP candidates, Anant Gadekar and Dhananjay Shetgaonkar, who contested the December 12 Zila Panchayat polls (ZP) from Arambol and Morjim constituencies.

"The local mandal should not have gone to the media with such issues. If there are questions to be asked, they should discuss them with the party leadership instead of levelling such allegations against senior leaders," Tanavade said on Tuesday.

Parsekar himself brushed aside allegations levelled against him by Parab and the defeated ZP candidates, saying he had personally blessed the candidature of both Gadekar and Shetgaonkar.

"These are baseless allegations, there is no truth to them. Just because they lost the elections, the two candidates are looking to shift the blame to me," Parsekar said.

Incidentally, the BJP had swept the ZP polls winning 33 out of the 49 seats.

This is not the first instance where Parsekar, who served as Chief Minister of Goa from 2014-2017, has been accused of working against the party in his erstwhile constituency after his loss in the 2017 Assembly elections to his arch-rival Congress' Dayanand Sopte in the Mandrem Assembly constituency.

After the polls, Sopte quit the Congress to join the Bharatiya Janata Party. The switchover had driven Parsekar to virtually rebel against the party, accusing the leadership of trying to sideline him.