Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Sunday alleged that a "sinister campaign by some opposition parties and a section of the media" was being run to "create a wedge" between him and his party BJP.

On Saturday, the Road Transport and Highways Minister said "leadership" should own up to "defeat and failures" also, remarks which were seen as critical to his party which lost polls in three Hindi heartland states.

In a clarification issued on Twitter, Gadkari said, "In the last few days, I have noticed a sinister campaign by some opposition parties and a section of the media to twist my statements and use them out of context and draw politically motivated inferences to malign me and my party."

"I have time and again strongly refuted such insinuations and once again condemn all these malafide and mischievous out of context reports attributed to me. Let me make it clear once and for all that conspiracies to create a wedge between me and the BJP leadership will never succeed," he added.

I have been clarifying my position at various forums and shall continue to do so and expose these nefarious designs of our detractors, he said.

The BJP stalwart had yesterday said that nobody is willing to own up to failure unlike success.

"Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan, as when there is success, there will be a race to take credit but in case of failure, everybody will start pointing fingers at each other," he said.

He was speaking at an event organised by the Pune District Urban Cooperative Banks Association Limited (PDUCBAL) in Pune.

"Sometimes, banks achieve success and sometime they will have to face failure... The banks have to face both the situations... In politics, when there is a failure, a committee is formed but in case of success, nobody comes and asks you," he said.

The BJP ceded power to the Congress in the recently-concluded assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

In the wake of the defeat, BJP leaders and Union ministers had said that the poll outcome was not a referendum on the performance of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.