In her meeting with President KR Narayanan late in the evening, Sonia Gandhi gave a list of 233 MPs, virtually throwing up her hands and leaving Rashtrapati Bhavan with fewer options. Narayanan, however, told her to continue her efforts and complete the exercise "as early as possible". Asked if she would form a secular coalition government, Sonia told newspersons outside Rashtrapati Bhavan: "I shall talk again with all the colleagues who voted against the confidence motion. It is for other secular forces to see that the BJP government does not come back."

As the spectre of a mid-term poll loomed large, there was frenzied activity to save the situation by cobbling up any alternative set-up. In the background of a confusion becoming worse confounded, there were at least two names doing the round for the top job. Inthe event of a Congress-led coalition, for example, Manmohan Singh's name appeared to be on top. In case of a Third-Front government, Deve Gowda seemed to have an edge.

The first sign of buckling down came from the Congress camp when CWC member and party spokesman Arjun Singh said his party was not averse to forming a coalition government in order to prevent the communal forces from staging a comeback to power. Apart from a coalition arrangement, the opposition was now working at the prospect of a Third Front-led government with a Prime Minister approved by the Congress in line with Mulayam Singh's formula. Convinced about the opposition failure to succeed in its plan, the BJP and its allies left nothing to chance and sent clear signal to Rashtrapati Bhavan that they were ready to be reinstalled as new government under Vajpayee having had a clear 270 strength in the Lok Sabha. After two rounds of meeting at the 7 Race Course Road in which they reaffirmed their faith in the leadership of Vajpayee afterformally re-electing him, they fielded constitutional expert and BJP MP L M Singhvi to explain to newsmen that there was nothing to debar the President from calling Vajpayee to form the government again.

Immediately after Mulayam Singh's meeting with President, AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and CPM general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet got in touch with each other telephonically to discuss the situation. Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy also got active to arrange meetings of senior opposition leaders to take stock of the situation. What unnerved them was also the fact that the RSP and the Forward Block leaders, in their meeting with Narayanan, opposed a Congress government. Before meeting the President, Sonia Gandhi too reviewed the situation with her senior party colleagues in the light of Mulayam Singh's anti-Congress stand.