Jaswant Singh and Jayalalithaa

Chennai, March 8: Senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh and ADMK boss Jayalalithaa may have held “secret parleys” at a common friend’s house last night but kept everyone guessing whether they actually met at a time elections are back in the air.

Sources said Jaswant, a former Union minister, “dropped in” at M.N. Nambiar’s house where Jayalalithaa also came to seek the BJP sympathiser and veteran actor’s blessings as part of her 60th birthday celebrations.

Observers said if the two leaders did meet last night, it could be important for Tamil Nadu where alliances hold considerable sway and parties with small presence sometimes help turn the tide against the ruling party.

Moreover, the DMK-led front, which swept all 39 Lok Sabha seats in the state last time but now faces a revolt by an ally, is expected to lose some in the 2009 polls because of the perceived anti-incumbency factor.

Jaswant, who attended a local college event this morning, said he was “not giving any interview”. Asked if had met Jayalalithaa last night, he barely concealed a smile.

Yesterday, after he arrived at Chennai airport, he had told reporters he was not on any specific political mission. But the choice of words implied that he might be on an exploratory trip.

A BJP source here said if a “secret meeting” had been scheduled between the two leaders, the state unit wouldn’t know as Delhi usually did not inform the local organisation about such parleys.

Jayalalithaa, who hosted a lunch for Gujarat chief minister and BJP poster boy Narendra Modi in January, also kept political circles guessing.

A statement from her Poes Garden residence this afternoon was silent on whether Jaswant was at Nambiar’s residence when she was there.

The statement said besides visiting Nambiar, whose son Sukumaran, a former classmate of Jayalalithaa, was once a BJP treasurer, the ADMK chief also drove down to the homes of well-wishers like educationist Y.G. Parthasarathy, producer K. Balaji and journalist Cho S. Ramaswamy.

Sources said even if talk of a BJP-ADMK realignment was not in the air, Jaswant and Jayalalithaa may have exchanged words on floor coordination in Parliament on the nuclear deal, which Jayalalithaa also opposes.

The “secret parleys”, they pointed out, had come barely a week ahead of the March 15 deadline the Left has set for a UPA-Left joint panel meeting on the pact.

Jayalalithaa herself had said after her meeting with Modi that it was still “premature” to talk of an alliance.

Another senior BJP leader, M. Venkaiah Naidu, sang the same tune last evening.

The former party chief told reporters in Chennai “nothing” had been “decided yet” by the high-command on renewing electoral ties with the ADMK.