Two Labour councillors who faced claims they actually live in Leicester have been expelled from the party.
Bharti Gajjar and Chandni Mistry were suspended from committes and the local party last week. Brighton and Hove News reported they were being investigated because of concerns they had lied about their Brighton connections.
This morning, the local Labour party confirmed the investigation was over, they had been expelled and local party’s chief whip has called on them to stand down.
Cllr Sankey said: “Claims concerning these councillors’ places of residence have been investigated and each has had their membership of the Labour Party cancelled.
“We have therefore taken immediate steps to have them removed from the Labour group of councillors at Brighton and Hove City Council.”
Chief whip Amanda Grimshaw said: “We now call on Councillors Gajjar and Mistry to do the right thing and stand down from the council, so that the people of Kemptown and Queen’s Park can elect new councillors to represent them.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party takes all complaints seriously and they are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures and any appropriate action is taken.
“In this case, the party has decided to cancel the membership of Bharti Gajjar and Chandni Mistry.”
A council spokesperson said: “We can confirm that concerns about election malpractice have been sent to the council and Returning Officer.
“Legislation and Electoral Commission guidance regarding the election process is clear that the Returning Officer must not undertake any investigation or research into a candidate.
“Nomination forms should be taken at face value and any information provided on Home Address or Consent to Nomination forms should not be checked for accuracy – other than to check that the address can be commonly understood.
“Any allegations of election malpractice should be made to the police and / or the courts.”
Bharti Gajjar was elected in Kemptown in the May elections, and Chandni Mistry in Queen’s Park.
Being expelled from a political party does not mean a councillor has to stand down.
However, if a councillor is convicted of a corrupt or illegal electoral practice this would disqualify them from remaining as a councillor.
Under the Represenation of the People Act 1983, this includes giving a statement of the name or home address of a candidate at the election which they know to be false in any particular.
Although the nomination papers for both councillors have been redacted, both state they gave an address in Brighton and Hove.
The offence of making a false statement on nomination papers carried a maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment.
With three by-elections in six months, that extrapolates into six a year – and twenty-four between now and the next locak election.
They have to resign first before there can be any bye elections.
They have been expelled from the Labour Group only. The group can’t remove them from their positions as councillors. Only the courts can do that if the CPS brings a case.
Well let’s hope the CPS brings a case and the pair of them get what they deserve. 5 years should do it!!!
Which would be an astounding outcome given the maximum sentence is 12 months, according to the article above!
Mr. Hawtree, your statement exemplifies the fallacy of unwarranted extrapolation, lacking logical relevance.
…says Captain Irrelevant
Ironically, you’ve introduced another logical fallacy, specifically ad hominem, which seems to be a recurring theme in your comments. Let’s move past the emotional defence from months ago and focus on developing well-reasoned counterpoints instead, shall we?
Thanks Captain!
Keep those trite comments coming – we all need a laugh on these cold wet winter days
Christopher, I can’t get the ‘Reply’ function to work, but if one of the two long-listed Labour councillors for the Pavilion seat actually gets selected and elected, that would make another one.
Your comment about the Palace Pier on another post is seeming more apposite by the day!
Didn’t one of them win an award?
Cllr Gajjar is a proven liar, fired for fraud and now expelled from the Labour party who have failed the people of Kemptown ward. She must go and go now.
That is basically what was said in the article, yes.
Why would they pretend to live in Brighton ? Considering the expenses councillors receive are not much and the chances of getting away with it are even less. Doesn’t seem worthwhile IMO
Six thousand or so each so far for doing nothing. If they continue doing nothing and remain as councillors for the full four years they will each receive nearly fifty grand which could be better spent IMO
It’s very much how much effort you put into the job, and this is where the contention is I feel. The basic of £13,359.60 is not enough to live off in Brighton, so many councillors will have a secondary source of income but virtue of necessity, however, if you look at how many hours a councillor can put into the job, which isn’t limited by weekends or late nights, that could be as low as £3.50 an hour in the extreme cases.
There’s a tough balance that doesn’t often get spoken about.
However, the allowance is there to make people able to take on the role and not disbar them completely from participating simply because they have a household to maintain. Does it succeed in this? I don’t have the answer to that – and I’m sure many will have different points of view about it.
Somebody pass the mogadon….
You already took it, Tom.
Labour probably paid them to run since they allegedly applied to run as Labour in cities all over the country.
Labour;’ rules require genuine home addresses (unlike some other political parties), in most cases, demonstrated by registration to vote.
I agree. Something more to this. Not one but 2 people from Leicester suddenly decide to run for councillors? Leicester is not exactly down the road. How many other councillors live outside of Brighton and Hove?
It’s called ‘doing a Druitt’
I too find that the “reply” button has browken down.
Meanwhile, will the actual occupants of the address given on the Nomination form be found complicit in the crime? Presumably the occupant forwards any mail received there?
I don’t believe receiving mail that isn’t yours is a crime, Christopher, otherwise, the amount of wrong Amazon parcels that have arrived over the last few weeks would put be away from a very long time!
What about the local Head of Electoral Services? Does he need investigating too? Or was he leaned on by certain individuals to let candidates in who shouldn’t have been let in?
The organisation that bizarrely shortlisted Ms Mistry as national “Young Councillor of the Year” might reconsider checking properly on nominated candidates from now on
They did explain why this was the case in the article. Did you not read it?
Really? No mention of the award and its organisers in this story.
Regarding checking properly on nominated candidates, which also indirectly answers the first part of your statement.
Nope. The organisation that arranges the best councillor awards ( and thank goodness she didn’t win) is national and not linked to any political party or to Brighton.
….the bottom line is as I understand it is they lied and are not to be trusted. They fortified documents, took tax payers money under false pretences.
I hope there are consequences but I doubt it.
There have already been consequences. You mean you hope there will be more severe consequences, right?
Absolutely……deter others with a bit of luck.
I can imagine the interested public will be more closely securitising whoever steps forward next. As they should!
Apart from all that, there has to be something wrong with a system whereby the council’s electoral people are apparently not allowed to check out that the details given are correct and that everything seems to depend on the relevant political party carrying out appropriate checks. As the system currently seems to operate, I could, for example, say I’m an independent candidate, fill in an appropriate address on the forms and stand for election as a councillor anywhere I fancied. There have been numerous cases like this over the years (not in B&H as far as I’m aware) and they’re still going on here and there. Either the eligibility rules are not fit for purpose, in which case they should be revised/tightened/scrapped, or councils should be given powers to make the necessary checks. Nobody wins in situations like these and something needs to be done about a system which has more holes than a colander. Fortunately, most people who stand for election as councillors are honest about their eligibility and, indeed, are known as locals to their prospective constituents.
Good. Please make them give their allowance back on the way out. Let’s find out who else was illegitimately parachuted in to make up the numbers and needs to go. There is also the question of the Labour Councillor who suffers from dementia and is kept out of sight as much as possible, but some of him have known him for years and are not fooled.
During the last Labour-run council several Labour councillors were expelled. Labour lost their majority and the greens took over. You would hope that the Labour group might learn from this and be very diligent in their vetting. After all, the Labour group are putting their name behind the councillors and many people vote on this basis.
Once again, it looks like our trust was misplaced. Basic background checks seem not to have been done. All very similar to the issues a few years ago. I
Even more worrying, Labour nationally were apparently more involved in candidate selection this time. If we are to vote for Labour in government, then surely they must be able to organise themselves first?
Interestingly, the Argus, which always has reams to say about all sorts of local matters and seems to have plenty of alleged reporters to do the work, hasn’t said anything about this issue since 27 November, when they reported the original story about the suspension and just let it drop off the radar. Too serious and difficult for them perhaps?
Or getting payments from the Labour party for good press…?
It’s currently at the top of their website, as uusal for the Argus they are slow off the mark. However their blatant bias towards potential Labour candidate Eddie Izzard is worrying.
Small fry compared to Winston Churchill, his seat 1913 – 1921 was in Broughty Ferry, Dundee. No way did that individual contribute there at any time ever. He was despised then for it but that being the “norm” then as now what do people expect from “politicians” ??. End to end scum countrywide.
I blame the national Labour Party for not checking… local wards were stopped from choosing their own candidates before hand… of course the whip jumps the gun since the Cllrs could appeal… either way, each Cllr is still a councillor but just as an independent… and note that role played by the unspoken pressure to have diversity in the mix
Exactly. The members/delegates/executives of the three city CLPs were completely bypassed by the national/regional party administration. If there is any failure of process and due diligence here then the SE region and national party own it.
Coincidentally they are bring utter clowns in failing to communicate with local CLPs on the current selection of GE candidate 🙄
Oh hang on, the Argus has just caught up, 4 mins after I posted my comment about their silence, and has apparently spoken to both Ms Mistry and Cllr Davis on the subject. As a Kemptown resident I would like to hear from Ms Gajjar. Queen’s Park can take care of itself and I’m not interested in anything Cllr Davis has to say about this or anything else.
Both are women and asian. There will someone shouting racism and misogyny somewhere (face palm)
These councillors should be reported to http://www.actionfraud.police.uk and made to repay allowances and expenses back as they have taken them under false pretences, pretending to represent the people of Brighton and Hove.
I was also suspicious of several labour councillors who were appointed last May….
Referring to something Benjamin said earlier (reply button still not working), I think that most of us would accept that councillors deserve payments for putting in the effort and hours on the job. However, in the case of the Kemptown councillor, regardless of the residency issue etc, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that she has been doing the job or has even been here. In fact, it appears that, mostly, people can’t get hold of her at all, although she has put in the occasional ‘public appearance’ since May. It’s open to her to respond to the allegations (as the Queen’s Park councillor has done after a fashion), but she’s said nothing so far.
I think it’s fair to say that most of us in Kemptown, if not all of us, wondered who on earth this lady was when she was announced as a candidate. Her few utterances pre-election sounded especially generic (see B&H News of 2 May 2023 for candidate profiles/comments), almost as if they had been parroted from the official Labour line on local issues with no particular insight gleaned from living here for many years as she claimed. And again, when pressed on the very controversial gasworks development proposal, Gary Wilkinson gave his response in some detail, and she said, rather belatedly as I recall, ‘The Labour group’s position is that we oppose the development’, as if she had spoken briefly to a Labour colleague (or even phoned a friend long-distance from elsewhere) to ask what it was all about and how she should respond. That gave me no confidence that she’d even heard of the proposal, let alone looked into it for herself, as the topic has been raging at the eastern end of the ward and beyond, and more generally across the city, for three years or more. If you were a politician, whether in office yet or not, who had spent many years living in Kemptown, as she claimed, then you couldn’t fail to be aware of it and have an opinion that extended beyond a mere ten words of nothingness.
So yes, she should try to explain herself, if she can, or, if she can’t or won’t, then she should resign immediately, so that we get the chance to have a by-election with candidates who can be properly scrutinised and questioned.
You idiot this is fraud! You have to live or own a business in Brighton to become a Councillor. That’s why there is a police investigation.
Any comment from the famous MP Russel Moyle ? after all he was walking round supporting them at campaign time.
He’s not replied to my emails on the matter!
I see in the newest article he has made a statement..
And is trying to take the credit for calling them out when another individual did.
Well tbf (and it’s often not easy to do so with LRM tbh) it is sort of part of his function to campaign for Labour candidates. Unless he knew that they were acting dishonestly then it’s unreasonable to hold him responsible.
If you stick a red Rose on a, Donkeys behind The people of Queens park and kemp town will still vote for it . You voters deserve all you get.
Hang on a minute, John, that’s too sweeping. Quite a few people in KT, for example, voted for non-Labour candidates. I agree that there are plenty of people who are exactly as you describe and will always be so. Those who didn’t vote for the Labour candidates certainly don’t deserve all this. What ward are you in as a matter of interest?
How did the young one end up nominated by the Labour Party for Young Councillor of the Year when she hadn’t even spoken at a committee or a Full Council Meeting? Didn’t they realise she wasn’t around in the ward? Who does the checking for selected candidates in the Labour Party? And people want the Labour Party to run the country? Give us a break. All the champagne socialists in Queens Park and Kemptown voted for these two ex=Labour Councillors but dont worry go and have a coffee topped up with almond milk and eat a muesli bar.
It wouldn’t necessarily even have been someone from the Labour party who nominated rookie councillor and , allegedly non Brighton resident Ms Mistry for the best national young councillor award.
Basically anyone can do it, you could ask a friend.
The LGIU (Local Government Information Unit) which runs the (national) awards says:
“Nominations can be made by anyone: members of the public, councillors and council officers. No self-nominations will be accepted. ”
Clearly the LGIU don’t double checks on those who were nominated to check their claims of worthiness, for example checking with the relevant council leader etc. Has Bella Sankey commented yet?
I did ask the awards people who nominated her at the time, but they refused to tell me. They told me it was confidential, even though the blurb when you nominate someone clearly says that any information submitted can be published. When I pointed that out, I didn’t get a reply.
The local Labour group said it wasn’t them who nominated her though.
vintvavge+fanvi is right – anyone can nominate.
From my stint on the Council there’s usually a nudge by the local party for submission to be made to folk at the LGA. The accompanying citations don’t appear out of thin air. The local Parties’ and political assistants’ fingerprints and DNA are usually all over the nominations.
This is what happens when Blarite Labour Central Office impose candidates over the heads of local branches
It’s such a shame..they have made a mockery of the election system: for the council, for the party, for LGIU..should surely be punished