She held two rounds of discussions with top party leaders at 10, Janpath, called AIADMK chief Jayalalitha over the phone and asked Sharad Pawar and Pranab Mukherjee to talk to West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. The result: Zero as Sonia felt the letters of support from other parties must be ready first while the others felt she should make up her mind before they make their moves.

The only concrete development was that Sonia and Jayalalitha are slated to meet tomorrow at 11 a.m. at 10, Janpath, a meeting which is expected to finalise what exactly to do about the next government. Before the duo meet, Sonia will preside over a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) tomorrow, the first after the Vajpayee governmentfell.

The CPP meeting is essentially to garner the views of the MPs and it comes amid moves to get Sonia re-elected as the CPP leader. The move emanated from a section of the CWC which feels this is necessary to show that Sonia will be the next Prime Minister and to undo any attempts by the Congress lobby against her to get any other Congressman chosen as the nominee for premiership.

All that came out of 10, Janpath today was to do nothing for the moment, wait for the other parties to finalise their stand and also await Narayanan's invitation before announcing concrete steps. However, this didn't mean much. The RSP and the Forward Bloc resisted attempts from CPI(M) and CPI leaders to convince them and stuck to their stand of not supporting a Congress government.

Elsewhere, TMC leaders G.K. Moopanar and P. Chidambaram reiterated that their party would only support a government headed by the Congress if it didn't include the AIADMK. No movement here. Likewise with the BSP which said it wouldn't mind beingpart of the next government provided they knew who was heading it and what it would be like.

But that is precisely what Sonia had no clue about. Her confidant Arjun Singh, credited with the moves to swiftly have a Congress government in place, merely repeated what he has been saying for a few days: ``We don't want to act without the initiative from the President.'' But then, Narayanan himself would like to act only if he has a fair idea of what the Congress wants to do.

Sonia talked at length to people like Sharad Pawar, Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Digvijay Singh. All they decided was to wait for a day or two, a euphemism for lack of clarity on the immediate future. Tomorrow's Sonia-Jayalalitha meeting could take things forward, hope Congress leaders.