The two former union ministers, Krishna Sahi and D P Yadav, are making a comeback to the Congress-fold while MLAs Vijay Shankar Dubey and Moid-ul-Rehman are the new entrants, general secretary in-charge of Bihar, Madhavrao Scindia announced.

Sahi had joined the Samata Party after being denied a Congress ticket in the last Lok Sabha election. She is a known detractor of former Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and her induction could be seen as a minor snub to Laloo.

Scindia said this was the first of the fallout of the Pachmarhi brainstorming session where the party gave top priority to its revival in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile, Congress foreign affairs department head Natwar Singh reacted sharply to the BJP's criticism of the Congress line on foreign policy in Pachmarhi. The party had decided to send two teams to South Africa and China respectively to ``repair'' relations with the two countries.

The BJP criticised this today to which Natwar Singh retorted, ``The Congress doesn't need lessons in nationalism and patriotism from an outfit called the BJP. This kind of verbiage (in the BJP statement) doesn't do credit even to the person who wrote it,'' Singh said.

He added that the BJP should have sent Vice-President Krishna Kant to South Africa to explain India's position on Kashmir to Nelson Mandela. ``Statesmanship demanded that Prime Minister A B Vajpayee should not have made a public issue of Mandela's statement on Kashmir. He should have talked to Mandela in private,'' Singh felt.