How will Rahul Gandhi, the whistleblower, explain his meeting with Modi?

Rahul Gandhi has done it yet again. After upping his game in the past few days, he has once again let it all slip away.

The immediate context is the meeting of a Congress delegation with Prime Minister Modi where a smiling Gandhi was photographed sitting opposite Modi and ostensibly pitching for a farm loan waiver.

In the backdrop of the corruption charges levelled by Gandhi against Modi less than 48 hours before that, the optics assumed a lot of significance.

That also led to an immediate setback when leaders of political parties including the SP, BSP, NCP, JD(S), CPI (M), CPI, DMK chose to drop out of a joint Opposition delegation set to meet President Pranab Mukherjee a couple of hours later.

Though the Left parties and DMK chose to be signatories in the memorandum submitted to the president, it turned out to be a snub to the Congress' unilateral decision to break the Opposition ranks.

This is likely to be counterproductive in many ways. At a time when the Congress is bargaining hard with the Samajwadi party for an alliance in the Uttar Pradesh polls, the political one-upmanship of this nature may end up terribly.

Also, with Opposition parties jointly resolving to hit the streets in the aftermath of a disastrous demonetisation decision by the government, this was not the ideal tactic.

While some senior leaders could be faulted in not persuading the Gandhi scion to skip the meeting with the PM, it is understood that they are not willing to come in the way of any decision lest it be interpreted in other ways.

It is necessary to go through the sequence of events to make sense of the current situation. On December 8, the Opposition parties finally recognised their folly in not debating the issue of demonetisation in both the houses and climbed down from their demands.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi met with the speaker Sumitra Mahajan to find a way out. But despite the efforts from the opposition, the government did not let the Lok Sabha function the next day.

After the Parliament was adjourned for the day, Rahul Gandhi went on to make the "earthquake" comment.

"Ye Hindustan ki history ka sabse bada scam hai... main Lok Sabha mein bolna chahta hoon. Wahan sab bataonga (this is the biggest scam in the history of India. I wish to speak in Lok Sabha. I will tell everything there)," was his original comment.

Cut to Wednesday, when the Parliament was reconvened after a four-day break, the informal understanding reached between Anand Sharma, Parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar and others to debate the issue of demonetisation was reportedly reneged by the treasury benches, on the "orders from the top". The understanding was that the Opposition would initiate the debate and Rahul Gandhi would be the first speaker. This is confirmed by most opposition parties including the Trinamool Congress.

Rahul Gandhi wasted no time in levelling personal corruption charges against the Prime Minister at a carefully choreographed briefing to the media at the central hall in Parliament flanked by other leaders from the Opposition.

"Read my lips. The prime minister is personally terrified because of the information that I have. I have information on the personal corruption by the Prime Minister. I want to reveal it in the Lok Sabha. The government is not allowing me to speak. The PM is afraid that if he lets me speak, his balloon will burst," Mr Gandhi spoke assertively.

It did not go unnoticed that Rahul had a bigger chair and was seated exactly at the centre. Though senior leaders like Sitaram Yechury stayed away, the fact that representatives of bitter political rivals like the Trinamool Congress and CPI (M) were present made for a good spectacle and lent it more credibility.

And this was the first time Rahul Gandhi had appeared to lead the Opposition charge in his entire career. Despite leaders of other parties admitting later that they had no clue about Rahul's charge of personal corruption against the prime minister, they still went along with Congress' game plan and it was remarkable - for this kind of unity was sorely missing in the initial part of the winter session.

The Congress delegation's meeting with the prime minister on December 16 was in this backdrop and has left a bitter aftertaste. Rahul Gandhi seems to be in a hurry to make up for the lost time and has in the process eroded the intensity of the collective charge on the Modi government.

Rahul Gandhi and his advisors would do well to remember how the good offices of Sonia Gandhi were necessary to obtain the Trinamool Congress' support while leading the charge.

This meeting of Rahul Gandhi with the prime minister has also led to politicians like Arvind Kejriwal coming up with taunts and allegations of collusion between the BJP and the Congress.

The million-dollar question is: When will Rahul Gandhi ultimately choose to make his allegations public? He reportedly responded to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's query at a parliamentary party meeting stating he had "bullet-proof evidence" against the prime minister.

It remains to be seen if Rahul Gandhi can come up with explosive charges as he had claimed. If his allegations end up a damp squib, his reputation will take a huge beating.

He would do well to remember the story of the boy who cried wolf and a fellow politician that immediately comes to mind upon the thought.