Advani in Delhi on Saturday. (PTI)

New Delhi, May 14: L.K. Advani called up Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalithaa to congratulate them on their victories yesterday but while the former did not receive the call, the latter answered “promptly”.

When the BJP leader called up Mamata, he was told the Trinamul Congress chief was “busy”. “I had given her a call but perhaps she was busy,” Advani told journalists on the sidelines of a programme at his Delhi home this evening.

Jayalalithaa, however, promptly came on the line. Advani said he told the AIADMK chief that had the DMK won in Tamil Nadu, it would have sent a “very bad message” to the country. “The people of Tamil Nadu are the ones most affected by corruption because the major actors are out there. So I am extremely gratified with the results,” he said.

Both Mamata and Jayalalithaa were former BJP allies. While Jayalalithaa had supported the NDA from 1998 to 1999, Mamata had joined the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led coalition in 1999 and became railway minister.

Neither went back to the BJP after parting ways with the party although Jayalalithaa had sent occasional feelers to some leaders. In January 2008, she had hosted Narendra Modi at her Chennai home a few days after he became Gujarat chief minister for the second time. She was present in Gandhinagar when he was sworn in.

Modi was among those who wished Jayalalithaa on Friday. BJP sources in Gujarat said she told Modi that she would want to emulate in Tamil Nadu his “model of development and administration”.