According to Choudhary, when she visited the Food and Supplies circle office number 11 at Nangal Raya in Delhi Cantonment on April 22, she found five applications for ration cards which were duly verified by the local MLA, Karan Singh Tanwar.

``These applications did not even have photographs. When we checked up the addresses given there, we found that two of them did not exist,'' she says. ``The two application against which ration cards had already been issued were in the name of Satinder Prasad Saha and Mahesh Chander, residents of Naraina in Delhi Cantonment. We tried to verify the names and addresses only to find that these men and these addresses were non-existent.''

The Delhi Government has recently announced a new scheme which entails that if a person can get the local MLA or MP's verification of his photograph and address, he can get a ration card in two days.

Choudhary feels that the 48-hour ration card scheme can only make things worse. ``Saying that the MLA's verification is enough is like giving them a free hand to issue bogus cards with greater ease,'' she feels.

She claimed that there are more than 30 lakh bogus ration cards in the city, she said, ``In just the Delhi Cantonment area, the election office would have only 250 voters on list but more than 1,000 bogus voters will also cast votes on the basis of such ration cards. When the returning officer asks for proof of address, these voters show their ration cards and they are no longer bogus.''MLA Karan Singh Tanwar could not be reached for comment.