New Delhi, Nov. 30: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh managed to achieve two long-held objectives at one stroke today — getting rid of Union home minister Shivraj Patil and shifting P. Chidambaram out of the finance ministry to take charge of it himself.

Patil’s inept handling of home affairs had been a talking point everywhere from chat shows to chaat shops but he stuck on to his post with the blessings of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Despite being pilloried by the media and civil society at large for not being — and not seen to be being — in command in face of repeated terror strikes on India under his watch, Patil led a charmed existence in North Block.

The three-day siege of Mumbai by armed desperadoes which has left nearly 200 dead and hundreds injured finally put an end to that today. The nation-wide outrage at the worst terrorist assault on Indian soil so far and the government’s failure to prevent the attack or launch a swift counter-offensive required some response — and Patil’s head had to roll.

The Prime Minister, whose hands were tied on choosing or shuffling his own ministerial pack, got the green signal at the Congress Working Committee meeting last night when the government in general and Patil in particular came under attack from all sides.

After Rahul Gandhi’s outburst, it was clear to everyone present that 10 Janpath would no longer stand in the way of Patil’s exit. His resignation this morning — accepted with due haste — was a mere formality.

The government was equally quick in announcing the name of Chidambaram as the new home minister — a move that may have taken some aback, particularly since a section felt that Pranab Mukherjee, the perennial Number Two, deserved the post in view of his seniority and experience. The home ministry is the only one among the Big Four (finance, external affairs and defence being the other three) that Mukherjee has not handled in his long innings in government.

But those in the know were not in the least surprised and marvelled at the manner in which the Prime Minister had quietly managed a coup in his own favourite ministry.

Although Chidambaram never received the kind of public flak that Patil did, there was a growing buzz in economic and corporate circles that he was not completely “in sync” with the Prime Minister and his core team over handling the fallout of the global financial meltdown.

Chidambaram, some felt, did not possess a trained economist’s expertise that was required in a time of crisis. That could have been offset through a process of consultation with experts but Chidambaram, temperamentally not a “team man”, was disinclined to seek or take advice from others.

That the finance minister and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia did not see eye to eye on many questions is not exactly a secret — not even for those outside the rarefied environs inhabited by economists and finance policy wonks.

And that the Prime Minister shares a much warmer rapport with Montek and has leaned on him more and more since the economic crisis unfolded — Montek was his “sherpa” at the G20 Summit for instance — is equally well known to those who regularly traverse the hundred-odd yards between South Block and North Block in Delhi’s Lutyens’ Zone.

However, despite periodic speculation that Chidambaram might be moved out of the finance ministry, Sonia Gandhi’s aversion to any cabinet reshuffle at this stage seemed to ensure that he would be there till the end of the government’s term.

But the unprecedented terror strike on Mumbai has changed all that. Forced to drop Patil from the sensitive home ministry, the Prime Minister got the opportunity to effect a change in the finance ministry as well — without implying any slight to Chidambaram.

In fact, Chidambaram’s famed “arrogance” — apart from his highly regarded competence and legal acumen — is regarded as ideal for his new job. It is not as if the shambolic intelligence and security apparatus can be transformed overnight. But Chidambaram, in complete contrast to Patil, has an image that inspires confidence, bordering on awe, in an otherwise critical media and is far better placed to impart a sense of security to a shaken nation.