'Rahul Gandhi is a SPG 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.

'We have conveyed our concern in this regard to the centre and I am sure they will take serious note of it,' he said.

Besides maintaining that the SPG was informed of Rahul's tour, the Congress spokesperson claimed that the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) felt politically threatened. 'It is the (result of) insecurity that the mass contact programme of Rahul Gandhi has generated,' she said.

While Rahul's movements from Barabanki, where he made his first halt after zipping away in his Tata Safari from Lucknow airport, were reported by some local journalists who ran into him by chance, his subsequent drive to Shravasti and the night halt in a tiny village remained a secret until Thursday morning.

Local Congressmen were led to believe that he had driven off from Bahraich towards Gonda, from where he would head via Faizabad to Amethi where he would spend the night at the Munshiganj guest house.

Barabanki, Bahraich and Faizabad are all neighbouring districts.

Party workers in Amethi kept waiting for Rahul almost the whole night and it was only in the morning that they realised that their MP had chosen a village in Shravasti for his night halt.

On Jan 16 this year, Rahul and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband spent a night in a Dalit family's hut in Simra village, part of Rahul's Amethi constituency after his visitor wanted to get a taste of 'real' rural life in India.