Uma Bharti comes out of 10 Janpath after meeting Sonia Gandhi on Saturday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, June 25: The appointment was for 10 minutes, but Sonia Gandhi gave her half an hour. It “overwhelmed” Uma Bharti.

The sadhvi, who recently returned to the BJP after nearly five years, today called on the Congress chief to talk about her “save Ganga” project and emerged rapturous after the extended tete-a-tete.

“I am overwhelmed that Sonia Gandhi has kept the issue of the Ganga separate from politics and given me time. She read out portions from a book by Nehru and told me that her family has faith in the Ganga. She assured me that she will talk to the PM and (environment and forests minister) Jairam Ramesh on my demands and ask them to meet me,” Uma told reporters after coming out of 10 Janpath.

Last week, Uma had referred to Rajiv Gandhi as her “older brother” and to herself as Rahul Gandhi’s “bua (aunt)”. She also said she intended to “tutor” her “nephew” on Indian history and specifically on Jawaharlal Nehru’s “invite” to the RSS to participate in a Republic Day parade in 1963, a year after the war with China.

She didn’t allude to the Congress president as her “bhabhi (sister-in-law)”, but Sonia appeared to have impressed Uma, some seven years after the sadhvi had met then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to tell him that a “foreigner” must not be allowed to become Prime Minister.

Uma had reportedly asked her party chief Nitin Gadkari’s permission to visit Sonia, an appointment she sought several months ago. Interestingly, Sonia chose to grant it after Uma rejoined the BJP.

BJP sources, however, said there was nothing “political” to the meeting. “Umaji herself emphasised that the issue of the river Ganga should not be politicised,” a source said.

The Congress’s chief spokesperson, Janardhan Dwivedi, too, played down the interaction, saying: “She had asked for time, there’s nothing more to it.”

Uma’s principal demands were declaring the Ganga a national river by an act of Parliament and activating the Ganga Basin Authority to monitor projects along the river and check out whether they were adhering to pollution-control norms.

Before the meeting with Sonia, Uma had told some journalists she had been “encouraged” by the Congress president’s “positive” response to a letter she had written to her on May 20. In her reply, written and signed by her in Hindi, Sonia had said she shared Uma’s concerns over the Ganga and added that the river was a “fountainhead of religious, cultural and historical beliefs” for crores of Indians.

Congress sources said if at all there was a political subtext to Sonia’s “prompt” response, it was the February elections in Uttarakhand where pollution of the Ganga, the state’s lifeline, has become a major issue. The party hopes to ride to victory on the back of the incumbent BJP government’s alleged “misgovernance”.

While the BJP was chary of reacting to Uma’s meeting, a source said her statement that Sonia should get the credit for saving the Ganga if the Centre did something tangible would “not go down well” with the party.