Simran, a six-year-old girl whose father was killed in Saturday’s blasts and mother injured critically, during a protest march at Gaffar Market on Tuesday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Sept. 16: The Congress is thinking of reviving the post of minister of state for internal security as a way out of the Shivraj Patil imbroglio.

Sources said if implemented, the move would help the party kill two birds with one stone. It would help the home minister keep his job and, given its nature and mandate, empower the incumbent to bring a “sense of purpose and confidence” the department is seen to lack under Patil, also under fire for his “sartorial elegance” when blast victims were dying.

The post had been conceptualised to separate the political and operational management of internal security until it was abandoned in 1996. While the home minister concentrated on political management, the minister of state for internal security — who notionally reported to him — focused on operational management, supervising intelligence gathering and follow-up action, Centre-state coordination and crisis management.

Among the politicians who held the post were P. Chidambaram, under Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Nehru under V.P. Singh and the late Rajesh Pilot under P.V. Narasimha Rao. The home ministers they reported to — Buta Singh, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and S.B. Chavan — gave them a free hand though Pilot’s tenure was abruptly cut short after he fell out with Rao.

Congress sources said Patil had become an “albatross” around the party’s neck in the face of mounting perception that he had “failed” in both the political and operational parts of his job.

“We need to send a tough signal, on the political and security fronts, especially with state elections around the corner,” a source said.

Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit is believed to have told party chief Sonia Gandhi that unless the home minister came out looking “businesslike and earnest” on curbing terror, the party could take a beating when the capital goes to polls in November.

While the Centre can distance itself from law-and-order crises in most states, Delhi and the Union territories are directly under its jurisdiction. Therefore, the sources said, Patil’s hand-wringing approach was not likely to take the Congress anywhere.

The sources, however, ruled out the prospects of Patil’s three junior ministers — Shakeel Ahmad, Sriprakash Jaiswal (both Congress) and V. Radhika Selvi (DMK) — getting the post of minister of state for internal security. The three, they said, were indistinguishable except when Jaiswal spoke out of turn on everything under the sun.

In an effort to show that the party was capable of countering the BJP’s campaign on terrorism and the Christian-bashing in Karnataka, more and more leaders started speaking out today on record.

Prithviraj Chavan blamed the Bajrang Dal for “attempting a Gujarat-like pogrom (in Karnataka) for a political purpose” and warned the BJP it would have to pay a heavy price.

Chavan clarified that he spoke as the general secretary in charge of Karnataka and not as a central minister.

His colleague Digvijay Singh demanded a ban on the Bajrang Dal and equated the outfit with the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India for “propagating the politics of hatred”.