Lucknow, Sep 24 - Rahul Gandhi has done it again. The Congress general secretary took his party colleagues and the state administration by surprise when he landed here unannounced and then spent Wednesday night in a poor Dalit's hut in a remote village of Shravasti district in Uttar Pradesh without many people getting to know about it.

While Congressmen and the Uttar Pradesh administration sweated to track down his whereabouts as he went about moving from one place to another, Rahul decided to stay in Rampur-Deogan village under Bhinga sub-division of Shravasti district, where he spent the night in the hut of a Dalit, people in the lowest rung of India's socioeconomic ladder.

He not only chose to share a meal with his host Cheddi Pasi, but also freely mingled with the villagers Thursday morning, asking them about their day-to-day problems besides inquiring whether the benefits of various centrally sponsored schemes were reaching them.

Local cops and media were kept at bay till 12.30 p.m., when Rahul once again whized off to another undeclared destination, knowledgeable security officials said.

It was widely believed that he would drive through Gonda and Faizabad, making similar unscheduled halts before reaching his parliamentary constituency Amethi by Thursday evening.

A peeved state government has shot off a letter to the union home ministry expressing concern over such violation of protocol by the Gandhi scion.

'Rahul Gandhi is a SPG (Special Protection Group) protected VIP, whose movements have to be properly monitored and covered under a prescribed security cordon; but the manner in which he was spinning around the state on his own was a gross violation of the laid-down security norms; after all it is the responsibility of the state to provide him appropriate security apart from his SPG cover,' pointed out a top police officer.