Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee may soon reward some loyalists with Cabinet berths.

Bharatiya Janata Party sources said the lucky ones would mostly belong to the party's coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance.

Following the party's national executive meet in Indore on April 4-5, the prime minister had indicated to his political aides that a small Cabinet reshuffle would be in order to reward a few who had stood by the government in difficult times.

The Samata Party, the Janata Dal ( United ) and the Trinamool Congress are most likely to benefit if and when the reshuffle takes place, sources close to the prime minister said.

Samata's Prabhunath Singh, JD-U's Devendra Prasad Yadav and Trinamool's Mamata Banerjee are the front-runners.

Sources pointed that Vajpayee was inclined to overlook the occasional defiant stand adopted against his government by Singh and Yadav.

The two were warned by the BJP leadership and ministers in the government belonging their own parties that their defiance could cost them dearly. However, Singh and Yadav did stick to the Vajpayee government and voted in its favour on crucial issues like Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The case of the Trinamool chief is similar. With the Left Front government of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya consolidating its hold in West Bengal, Mamata is ruing her decision to walk out of the NDA over the issue of bifurcation of Eastern Railway.

Overcoming her initial inhibition at the seemingly difficult task of warming up to the National Democratic Alliance again, Mamata has in the recent days regained her proximity to Vajpayee. Some other senior NDA and BJP leaders like Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani, however, do not appear to be overly enamoured of the Trinamool chief's moves.

The sources indicated that Advani's reservations on Mamata could have been instrumental in her being overlooked by the prime minister in the recent Cabinet reshuffles.

But now that the BJP leadership has made up its mind to contest the 2004 general election in partnership with all its NDA partners,  Mamata, Singh and Yadav stand a better chance to win a Cabinet berth.