Party leaders, who have converged in the capital, are holding parleys with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and other top BJP functionaries like Home Minister LK Advani. From the kind of pressures being brought on the Prime Minister, it appears that it may not be an easy task to reconcile the conflicting preferences of various parties for coveted ministries.

Different means are being adopted to put pressures in this regard. Telugu Desam Party surely is keeping its options open. While Chandrababu Naidu told reporters on Friday that he would give "issue-based support" to the NDA government, he was non-committal on joining the government. "We will take a decision at the appropriate time", Naidu said.

Observers see Naidu's stance as part of the hard barganing that is expected to begin. Senior DMK leader Murasoli Maran has already stated that his party would not "blackmail" but certainly "bargain".

While pulls and pressures would continue till the government is formed, a combined meeting of the newly elected Lok Sabha members of NDA is being held on Sunday which would elect Vajpayee as its leader.

While BJP leaders are insisting that it is the Prime Minister's prerogative to select the members of his team and allocate portfolios to them and with a view to resolving the problem, suggested that the parties submit lists of the persons they would like to be inducted into the council of ministers, the parties are insisting on indicating their preferences for portfolios also.

The coordination committee of the alliance met here on Friday to take stock of the post-election situation. The second-largest constituent of the NDA with 29 memebers, TDP kept away from the meeting. However, Mamata's Trinamool Congress which is not a part of the NDA as yet, sent a representative. National Conference also sent a representative.

Those who attended the meeting apart from the Prime Minister, who presided over it, included home minister LK Advani, external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, finance minister Yashwant Sinha, I&B minister Pramod Mahajan, industry minister Sikander Bakht, parliamentary affairs minister PR Kumaramangalam and Kushabhau Thakre (all BJP).

Alliance partners included commerce minister Ramkrishna Hegde and defence minister George Fernandes (Janata Dal-U), S Ramdoss (PMK), Vaiko (MDMK, Karunanidhi and Murasoli Maran (DMK), Prakash Singh Badal and SS Barnala(SAD),K Ramamurthy (TRC), Chouba Singh, Maneka Gandhi (Ind), Suresh Prabhu (Shiv Sena), Om Prakash Chautala (INLD), Steel Minister Navin Patnaik (BJD), Sukhram (HVP), Sharif Din Sharif (National Conference), Naresh Agrawal (Loktantric Congress), and Bikram Sarkar (Trinamool Congress).

Meanwhile, TDP in separate communications to the President and Vajpayee informed that the party had decided to extend support to NDA in the formation of a new government at the Centre.