BJP will have both Mamata & Sudip, or none

KOLKATA: The BJP leadership has sent a clear message to Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee: either accept rebel party MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay as a minister or forget becoming a minister yourself. If Mamata agrees to the condition, she will be offered the coal ministry. She will also have to accept Sudip as a minister of state in charge of commerce and industry or railways, her troubleshooters camping in Delhi were told two days ago.Top Trinamul sources claimed that Mamata would be allowed to bargain for a second post of MOS for her party during her talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, where she could push her man of choice. The Prime Minister is expected to return from abroad in the first week of June and talks with Mamata are unlikely to take place before the second week. Mamata's men in Delhi, Dinesh Trivedi and Ratan Mukherjee, have also been given to understand that top BJP leaders have lost all interest in her re-entry into the Cabinet because of her "unpredictable" nature. Yet, she was being offered the ministry to honour Vajpayee's commitment. While Mamata is yet to respond, the BJP leadership reportedly thinks it will be difficult for her to accept Sudip as a ministerial colleague so soon after putting up a dramatic opposition to the move. What has worried the BJP most is the manner in which Mamata "insulted" deputy prime minister L.K. Advani, holding him responsible for the fiasco and even suggesting that he had tried to split the Trinamul. According to sources, after studying reports collected by the Union home ministry on the state panchayat polls, the BJP leaders have started doubting Trinamul's ability to mobilise the majority of the anti-Left voters any longer. They also feel the Trinamul-BJP alliance in the state has failed to yield the desired results. Sudip, meanwhile, made no attempt to contact Mamata even on the third day of his stay in Kolkata. He told TNN on Wednesday that he was prepared to campaign for the party for the Nabadwip Lok Sabha by-election next month. "If the party leader asks me to campaign, I will definitely do so," he said. Mamata, meanwhile, indicated during the day that she might not campaign for the BJP candidate in the Vidyasagar by-election slated for June 8 as she would be busy campaigning for the Trinamul candidate in Nabadwip.