Lucknow, Sep 6 - Nearly a thousand ration cards and voter ID cards have been recovered from a field in Uttar Pradesh's Basti district, officials said Sunday.

Villagers of Ganeshpur village noticed a plastic bag lying in a sugarcane field and informed the police about the same. Police and administrative officials were surprised to recover the cards from the bag.

'Some of the voter ID cards even date back to 1995 and the ration cards include both the below poverty line and above poverty line cards. Their authenticity is being checked and investigations are on,' District Magistrate Rajesh Tyagi told IANS over phone.