Lucknow, Sep 24 (Inditop.com) After taking his party colleagues and the state administration by surprise when he landed unannounced in Lucknow and drove off to an undisclosed destination, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi spent Wednesday night in a poor Dalit’s hut in a remote village of Shravasti district in Uttar Pradesh.
While Congressmen and the Uttar Pradesh administration burnt midnight oil to track down his whereabouts as he went about moving from one destination 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 a “safe” distance till 12.30 p.m., when Rahul once again shot off to another undeclared destination.
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.
“We have conveyed our concern in this regard to the centre and I am sure they will take serious note of it”, he 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.
rounak