Union Minister Prem Chand Gupta,a confidant of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav,called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday,signalling the RJDs readiness to break bread with the Congress again. While official sources said there was nothing political about the meeting,the RJD chiefs message did not go unnoticed. The Congress was,however,not particularly enthusiastic about the return of its old ally with its internal survey on Wednesday giving the RJD and Ram Vilas Paswans LJP together only nine seats in Bihar. Senior NCP leader P A Sangma also met JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav in Delhi on Wednesday,but the party sought to play it down maintaining that the NCP was firmly with the Congress. There may be some hiccups (in Meghalaya) but that is part of the game. The NCP is very much part of the UPA and we are happy with it. We are committed to giving this country a secular government, NCP leader Supriya Sule told The Indian Express. With its internal assessment after the last phase of polling pegging the UPAs tally around 225,the Congress was open to the idea of an alliance with any party,except the BJP and the Shiv Sena. For that matter,senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh dropped hints about the partys readiness to woo Mayawati. Asked if the Congress was ready to dismiss Mayawati Government,as proposed by the Samajwadi Party as a precondition to support to any formation at the Centre,Singh said,There is no question of dismissing a duly elected state Government. He said only the BJP and the Shiv Sena were communal with whom Congress will have no truck. The Congress was learnt to be keeping its channels of communication open with Chiranjeevis Praja Rajyam Party in Andhra Pradesh and Jayalalithaas AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. The issue of prospective alliance partners also came up at a dinner organised for those involved with the Congress war room on Wednesday. Senior party leaders who attended the dinner were learnt to have deliberated on different possibilities,including the difficulties in stitching up an alliance with either Nitish Kumar or Jayalalithaa-given its implications for JD(U)-BJP government in Bihar and DMK-led government in Tamil Nadu. But nothing is impossible in politics. We will make our moves only after we know who stands where on May 16, said a senior leader.
