Delhi Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna has dismissed allegations that the photo identity card order was aimed at giving more powers to the police, saying random checks were already taking place and only suspicious-looking people would be checked.

Meanwhile, defending the proposal for the revalidation of licences issued by other states, he said his intention was to make Delhi's roads safer.

"No. It is not as if it is not already happening (random checks). In areas which are considered very sensitive from security angle, people are already being checked at various barricades and those who do not arouse any suspicion are allowed to go through," said Khanna.

He was replying to a question on whether the order would give extra powers to the police, which could be misused.

The Lt Governor, who did a U-turn on the issue of making photo-ID cards mandatory after the decision came in for severe flak from various quarters, said, "If you start saying that police always misuse any power for keeping a security watch, then we are arguing that we should not have police at all."

"And just because in some incidents the police have harassed people, say a corrupt traffic cop, that does not mean that for these reasons we do not have traffic police at all," Khanna said.

He said the order was for random checks of persons who aroused suspicion and was made in view of intelligence inputs about terror threats.