Manmohan Singh, Mamata Banerjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee

New Delhi, Sept. 7: Mamata Banerjee sought an appointment with Manmohan Singh and began courting Muslims a day after announcing her partial parting with the NDA, but took care to also call on an ailing Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Congress and the BJP waited for clearer signals, one curious to see if she would make a complete break with the NDA and the other certain that she would do nothing drastic till after the next election.

Mamata kept mum and left for Aligarh to share a platform with Congress and “third front” Samajwadi Party leaders tomorrow, when she speaks at a seminar on the Srikrishna Commission and Sachar Committee reports at Aligarh Muslim University.

The Trinamul Congress leader has been cautious since reaching Delhi yesterday — after telling a gathering of Muslim students in Calcutta that she was no longer a part of the NDA in Bengal.

“I only said we are with no one in Bengal,” she told reporters in Delhi. “I didn’t say anything about the national scene.”

Her colleagues, who admitted in private the party would like to tie up with the Congress before the next election, also avoided public comments about leaving the NDA. They said it was now up to the Congress to make the next move.

There was no word on whether Mamata had been granted the meeting with the Prime Minister, but she seems likely to meet Margaret Alva, the Congress general secretary in charge of Bengal, next week.

Trinamul leaders said the point of Mamata’s statements yesterday was to reassure the Muslims of Bengal that she was not with the BJP. Her decision not to vote for the BJP’s presidential nominee, too, had the same purpose.

“Her statement should be seen in this context,” a Trinamul leader explained.

Trinamul knows that Nandigram has angered Bengal’s Muslims, who feel the Left Front has sold them short. The Sachar report, which the Left is looking to exploit, shows that the Bengal government has done little for the minority community.

“Under these circumstances, why should we carry the baggage of the BJP with us?” the Trinamul leader asked.

Beyond this, Mamata would show her cards only after the Congress got a divorce from the Left, her party sources said. The Congress’s central leadership, however, wants her to divorce the BJP first, “formally and irrevocably”.

“She is so unpredictable,” a BJP leader said. “Nobody knows what she might do after the election.”

Her meeting with Vajpayee may bolster this line of thinking. “I had deep respect for Atal Bihari Vajpayee and had become railway minister,” Mamata had said yesterday, almost suggesting he was the magnet who drew her to the alliance.

It could, however, be a courtesy call to a man who had been in hospital last month.

Congress sources said it’s difficult to read Mamata’s mind from who she meets or does not meet.

In recent months, she was seen talking convivially with Sonia Gandhi several times in Parliament. But she also invited Sonia’s staunch critic Amar Singh, the Samajwadi general secretary, to her home and treated him to machher jhol.