While the Congress’s former alliance partners sulk and its electoral allies reconcile themselves to their diminished clout in the new government, one ally has pride of place. So the Congress leadership chartered a special flight to fly Mamata Banerjee to Delhi tonight. She will meet party president Sonia Gandhi tomorrow morning to work out the contours of the Trinamool Congress’s participation in the new UPA government.

Banerjee, with her 19 MPs, is the Congress’s largest ally and, more significantly, the one who handed the Left its most humiliating defeat in over three decades.

The 20-seater chartered C-850 aircraft, according to Air Traffic Control (ATC) sources, landed this evening and was parked near Kolkata airport’s cargo area. This was done to ensure that Banerjee enters the terminal through VIP Gate 7 and drives straight to the aircraft which took off at 10.30 pm tonight.

When contacted, Sultan Ahmed, the Trinamool’s newly elected deputy leader of the parliamentary party, told The Indian Express: “Didi was busy in the evening and hence couldn’t take a regular flight. Because she is scheduled to meet Soniaji in the morning at about 11 am, a plane was sent for her.”

This evening, Mamata had a meeting with the city’s artists and intellectuals who had come out openly this time with their slogan “Vote for Change.” She went to painter Suvaprassana’s Salt Lake residence at about 8 pm where writer Mahasweta Devi, painter Jogen Chowdhury, actor Shaonli Mitra, poet and singer Kabir Suman and several of her MPs were present.

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