Sonia Gandhi's family residing at Ulhasnagar?

A social activist has found a ration card on the Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation(UMC) premises that was issued in the names of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and daughter Priyanka, bearing their Delhi address. The family's annual income was shown as Rs 30,000.

The ration card was issued by the Thane rationing office. The ration card was issued despite Sonia Gandhi's address being mentioned as Delhi's 10 Janpath, indicating gross negligence on part of the rationing officials. Premchand Jha, an RTI activist of the Ulhasnagar Bachao Abhiyan, has written to the election commissioner about the issue, requesting him to disqualify ration cards as identity proof for casting votes during polls as anyone can make such fake ration cards.

Talking to TOI, Jha said, "Last Saturday, when I was returning with my colleague Praveen Pandey from the UMC, I found the ration card lying in the parking lot." Jha said "When I checked it, I was shocked to see the names of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and daughter Priyanka on it."

When Jha inquired, he found that the card was issued from the Thane rationing department office. "It is shocking that the ration card has the signature of rationing officer, Mr Kamble, who has cleared it on August 7, 2011. Since then, the person who had got this bogus ration card has even taken kerosene twice from the ration shop in the name of the Gandhi family," said Pandey.

"It is often found that bogus ration cards are used as identity proof for voting. With municipal polls round the corner in several parts of the state, such bogus ration cards may be used for large-scale for voting. This is the reason why we have written an application to the state election commissioner (SEC), requesting them to disqualify ration cards as identity proof to avoid bogus voting."

People can get voters' ID cards on the basis of ration cards. Recently, a political party in Ulhasnagar had detected about 52,500 bogus voters. The SEC then ordered UMC chief Ashok Rankhambh to remove all bogus names from the voters' list.