A day after the BJP said it was keeping "all options open" on government formation in Jammu and Kashmir, the party opened a window of negotiations with the National Conference on Wednesday. It is believed that an emissary of National Conference leader Omar Abdullah secretly met senior BJP leaders in the Capital to discuss possibilities of government formation in Jammu and Kashmir.

While Abdullah was planning to fly to London, his key aide is understood to be in the forefront of opening channels with the BJP. Meanwhile, BJP sources in Srinagar said that the party was trying to get in touch with NC chief Farooq Abdullah, who was recuperating after a kidney transplant.

The BJP's parliamentary board has decided to depute a two-member team led by finance minister Arun Jaitley to hold talks with the party's newly elected MLAs in the state and supervise the election of their leader in the assembly. The parliamentary board, at its meeting attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah and other senior leaders, discussed the results in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand.

A BJP leader indicated the party's intention to pull out all the stops to be in power in Srinagar saying that sitting in Opposition was not one of the "options" for a political party but a "compulsion".

Omar Abdullah's former political advisor Devinder Singh Rana is the brother of Jitendra Singh, minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office. Rana, who is the NC's provincial president in Jammu, was among the few party candidates to win in a BJP wave in the Hindu-dominated region. The BJP swept Jammu winning 25 seats and recording its best ever performance in the state. With NC's Kashmir-based leaders losing elections, Rana's clout has grown in geometric proportions next only to Omar Abdullah. In past, he had been under attack from Kashmir-based NC leaders for his closeness with the chief minister.

The party, which is trying to cobble up the numbers to be in a position to stake claim on government formation, is banking on a PDP-Congress alliance falling short of the required strength in the 87-member House. The PDP has 28 seats and the Congress 12 and together the alliance falls short by four.

But, PDP sources say their alliance with Congress, which does not have a single Hindu MLA, was handicapped because of the Congress's non-performance in its traditonal Hindu strongholds. An alliance with Congress would mean isolating a powerful Hindu belt of Jammu, which would have its consequences.

Meanwhile, BJP sources said the party would get the support of six more MLAs -- two of People's Conference, one seat of People's Democratic Front led by Hakeem Yasin, two iindependents and BJP rebel Pawan Gupta -- which would take its strength to 31, crossing the tally of the PDP.

A BJP leader said the party's decision would be driven by "development, regional balance and stability" in the state.

Though the BJP has said that it was keeping "all options open", the party apparently is giving priority to a strategy in which it would not have to play second fiddle to the PDP. Besides, a chunk of the BJP's vote in Hindu-dominated Jammu region has come from the anti-PDP plank.

Any tie-up with the PDP, which is ideologically at loggerheads with the BJP. would be based on hard bargaining and compromising on core issues like Article 370 and AFSPA. An alliance with the NC also would have its flip side as the verdict in the state was against the party.

However, the BJP's reaching out to the NC, which was a constituent in the Vajpayee government, would weaken the PDP's bargaining power.