Rahul Gandhi drove solo through several districts of UP for nearly 17 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, playing hide and seek with the state police, administration and intelligence establishment, all of whom were kept in the dark about his schedule, and on where he spent the night.

Chief Minister Mayawati’s government expressed outrage over the ostensible threat to his security this posed — a reaction that the Congress party in Delhi dismissed as rather reflecting the “political insecurity of that leader”.

On several occasions, the UP police received reports about Rahul having been sighted at some place — only to find him gone by the time they reached the spot. The police finally caught up with him at 8.30 this morning — and found him taking a walk in the fields at Tilhar village in Shrawasti district, close to India’s border with Nepal.

The journey began at 3.30 pm yesterday, immediately after Rahul landed in Lucknow’s Amausi airport on Kingfisher Airlines flight IT-240. Escorted by his SPG securitymen, the young Congress leader drove away, leaving no tracks for the UP police to follow.

Around 6 pm, the police got the report that Rahul had been seen in Haidergarh in Barabanki district, eating jalebis at a wayside sweet shop. Then began a chase across Barabanki, Bahraich, Faizabad, Shrawasti and Sultanpur — with Rahul remaining constantly out of their reach.

“When he left from the airport, we expected him to go to his Munshiganj guesthouse in Amethi,” said a top source in the UP police. “But around 6 pm, we heard that he had been seen in the Ramnagar area of Barabanki.

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