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Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Thursday achieved 'partial success' in getting Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani to sympathetically hear her plea for her party's return to the ruling National Democratic Alliance.
A Trinamul parliamentarian party MP said on Friday that Mamata visited Advani's Pandara Road residence and spoke to his wife Kamala.
Kamala immediately conveyed Mamata's message to her husband, following which they spoke to each other over the telephone.
Advani was in Bombay on Thursday, for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's surgery on the right knee.
"A relieved didi (Mamata) returned to Calcutta on Friday morning, obviously having received some kind of an assurance from Advani," the MP pointed out.
Meanwhile, according to media reports, Mamata met senior Samata Party leader and former defence minister George Fernandes on June 6, apologising to the latter for earlier demanding his resignation (as defence minister) over the Tehelka scandal.
Mamata pleaded to Fernandes that her demand for his resignation was basically due to political compulsions, which had a direct bearing for the Trinamul's "welfare" in West Bengal politics.
Samata spokesman Shambhu Srivastava professed ignorance about the meeting.
"Well, it is news to me, I am not aware of any such meeting," he told rediff.com.
However, outspoken Samata Party Lok Sabha member Prabhunath Singh said that "I and my party colleagues, in principle, are against the re-induction of treacherous elements into the NDA."
Singh's outburst was directed at Mamata, who has begun ignoring jibes thrown at her by many resentful NDA leaders and seems to have veered around to the view of her party MPs that rejoining the ruling alliance at the Centre is the Trinamul's best bet.
Singh's opposition to the Trinamul's re-entry into the NDA fold stems from his apprehension that if Mamata's party becomes a ruling alliance partner at the Centre once again, his prospects of getting a ministerial berth in the Vajpayee government diminish.
While he has been striving to get a slot in the Union Cabinet, Samata leaders like Nitish Kumar and Fernandes have so far blocked his endeavour.
BJP sources underscored that the "deal'' being worked out between the BJP leadership and Mamata is that if her party is permitted to rejoin the NDA, she will have to be satisfied with a cabinet berth other than the railway ministry, which she held prior to the Trinamul's leaving the NDA.
More importantly, Mamata will have to willy-nilly keep quiet as her bete noire - rebel Trinamul MP Ajit Kumar Panja - is also made a cabinet minister in the government, the BJP sources pointed out.
Vajpayee had recently praised Panja for his sticking to the NDA even when Mamata had caused her party to break away from it.
"The decks are being cleared for a scenario where the Trinamul chief may rejoin the NDA at the cost of considerable erosion of credibility," the BJP sources added.
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