New Delhi, June 1: Four ministers met Baba Ramdev at the airport today in an unusual effort to convince him to call off his planned fast but the yoga guru played for “100 per cent agreement on all issues”, sending the Prime Minister into a late-night huddle with the ministers to draw up a fresh proposal.

The Congress core committee will meet tomorrow to discuss the proposal before finance minister Pranab Mukherjee calls on Ramdev on June 3, a day before he plans to start the indefinite fast at Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds.

“The talks were positive but till there is 100 per cent agreement on all issues and a decisive stage is reached, the fast will go on,” the yoga guru said after the talks with the ministers led by Mukherjee.

Mukherjee, Kapil Sibal, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Subodh Kant Sahay had spent two hours talking to Ramdev, who flew in on a private jet from Ujjain.

A section of the Congress felt the government was bending over backwards to persuade Ramdev. A senior leader claimed the party was not consulted and argued that sending senior ministers to the airport was a bad strategy. Party general secretary Digvijay Singh appeared to echo the view, asserting that nobody was afraid of Ramdev. “He (Ramdev) should have accepted the Prime Minister’s appeal and withdrawn his fast (plan),” Singh said in Moradabad.

But the ministers were said to have been deputed by the Prime Minister himself, a day after he urged Ramdev to call off his fast and promised to find a “practical” solution to the black money problem.

The unusual gesture of sending the team to the airport appeared to be driven by intelligence inputs suggesting the RSS was backing Ramdev and that he would draw crowds much larger than Hazare did. “We do not want the RSS to hijack Baba,” said a minister.

Government sources also suspected the BJP and the RSS were pushing their black money campaign through Ramdev after having made the issue a plank in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections but met with little success.

RSS joint general secretary Suresh Bhaiya Joshi recently wrote to all state units asking them to mobilise cadres to support Ramdev’s agitation, sources said. While the RSS was lukewarm to the BJP-led NDA’s rally against corruption, it was determined to make Ramdev’s fast a success.

Sibal, however, expressed hope of a breakthrough in the June 3 meeting and declared that the negotiations would go on. “He (Ramdev) raised important issues. We prima facie responded to them,” he said.

Government sources described Ramdev as “extremely cordial” during the talks. They suggested he may have found it difficult to call off his planned fast as his volunteers had already left for Delhi from across the country. “He might stage a show of strength and then call off after a day or two,” a senior Congress leader hoped.

A former BJP ideologue advising Ramdev said today the guru was likely to fast till June 9. He said the RSS was aiming to fill up the Ramlila Grounds and gather a crowd of 5,000 at Jantar Mantar — Hazare’s protest venue — on each day of his fast. But the RSS has told pracharaks to come in plain clothes, not their trademark khakis, to avoid being marked out.