State home secretary Mahesh Gupta told mediapersons in Lucknow: 'Such a thing is not done for a VIP of his stature; we are going to take up the issue with both the SPG and the union government.'

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,' Natarajan 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.

While leaving from the Lucknow airport, the Gandhi scion gave the media a slip and left. But he made it a point to get himself photographed with the driver of the Innova taxi which took him around eastern Uttar Pradesh.

'Rahul Saheb gave me a tip of 3,500 rupees,' chauffer Prashant Yadav told anxious mediapersons outside the airport.

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.