(Top)M Veerappa Moily and Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi, Jan. 31: A lunch Rahul Gandhi attended last week has set tongues wagging in the Congress about a rising star.

The buzz isn’t about the fare M. Veerappa Moily served but that the general secretary had pulled off a coup of sorts.

Congress ministers and MPs also hosted lunches — and pretending the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh debacles didn’t happen — but their guest lists were mixed.

If Sachin Pilot, the young Dausa MP, invited media hotshots to his annual kisan (farmer) lunch, urban development minister S. Jaipal Reddy kept an open house. But neither Rahul nor Sonia Gandhi turned up at these events.

Moily was discreet when asked a day before the lunch whether Rahul would show up. “I have invited all general secretaries. Let’s see who turns up,” he said.

But what started as a trickle at his house soon swelled into a crowd midway through the lunch when word got around that the “heir apparent” (Rahul) would be coming.

When the Amethi MP arrived, there was a near scramble as ministers, office-bearers and the babas (the young leaders) jostled to get close to him.

If Rahul’s presence was a barometer of how far the Karnataka leader had come, Moily zoomed to the top of the Congress charts, past other general secretaries like Janardhan Dwivedi and Digvijay Singh.

The clout hasn’t gone unnoticed. “His stars are shining,” said a colleague.

But Moily’s rise in the Congress hasn’t been a joyride. He has often been accused of staying on the side of “those who mattered”. But in spite of his apparently smooth ways, he was embroiled in 1984 in the infamous “Moily tapes” episode, a precursor to today’s sting operations.

He was the first Indian politician to be allegedly “caught” — or heard — offering a bribe to Independent legislator C. Byre Gowda to get him to defect to the Congress. The Justice N.D. Venkatesh Commission, probing the bribery allegations, exonerated Moily but he had to remain in the wilderness for the next few years.

Now, though, he appears to have put the past behind him, bagging a series of high-profile assignments. For instance, he headed the second administrative reforms commission, whose term was extended by six months yesterday.

But a Congress source said Moily’s real ability lay in bridging the distance between the party and the government. He offered proof of this today, dismissing reports that the Maharashtra government was “not seriously” pursuing the 1993 riot cases against Shiv Sena leaders. The denial came after Moily spoke to chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.

On the Sethusamudram project, Moily finalised the official stand with culture minister Ambika Soni to avoid tying the party in knots over what it believed and what ally DMK wanted.