New Delhi, Jan. 13: As backroom confabulations and jockeying over a cabinet revamp intensify, the conservative and often indecisive Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, finds herself riven by expectations placed upon her by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi.

While the Prime Minister, shaken by inflation and the corruption taint around him, is seeking radical image-correction, Rahul is said to have demanded removal of deadwood from the top party structure. Reorganisation of both the cabinet and the AICC organisation are on the anvil.

The arrowhead impulse for cabinet changes remain two of Singh’s seniormost colleagues — finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P. Chidambaram. Both have been involved in scarcely-disguised one-upmanship, especially since the leak of the Niira Radia tapes. Irrespective of whether or not they played a role in l’affaire Radia, there is a strong view that both the telephone tap — and the subsequent selective leaks — require demonstrable action. The impression has grown in the aftermath of the leaks that such tapping violated fundamental norms, something that the corporate world in particular strongly objected to.

Chidamabaram is seen to have bungled his case further by defending the tap in Parliament on the grounds that tabs need to be kept on “financial terrorism”, a broad-brush justification that the Prime Minister himself had to correct when he spoke to top corporates in mid-December.

“We wish to provide a level playing field for private businesses, free from fear or favour. I am aware of the nervousness in some sections of the corporate sector arising out of the powers conferred upon governmental authorities to tap phones for protecting national security and preventing tax evasion and money laundering. While these powers are needed in the world that we live in, they have to be exercised with utmost care and under well-defined rules, procedures and mechanisms so that they are not misused,” he told the inaugural session of India Corporate week.

There is also a section in the party that Chidambaram has “mishandled” the course of Binayak Sen’s case in addition to “overreaching” himself with comments on inflation. Chidambaram, if other parts of the complex jigsaw fit, could be sent to the ministry of external affairs as replacement for S.M. Krishna, who has failed to fit the requirements of the job. Insiders say the foreign ministry job cannot be seen as a reward for Chidambaram because all key areas are effectively run by PMO mandarins, including National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon.

The case for moving Pranab out of finance, even though the next budget is under preparation, is that the price spiral has become a big-ticket headache for the government and measures, if only symbolic, need to be taken to assuage public restiveness. “Whatever may be the nitty-gritty reasons for who may be responsible, the finance minister ultimately has to take the blame for unbridled inflation,” one top Congress leader said.

Pranab is learnt to have been “sounded out” on being moved to home, something he is personally averse to, especially on the eve of the budget.

Among probable successors to Pranab are Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said to have the PM’s strong backing, and C. Rangarajan, chairman of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council.

Sonia, who is known to be a political ditherer, is said not to be in favour of too many drastic changes.