Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman to stand trial

The controversial Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, will have to face a High Court trial over claims of electoral fraud. The  development emerged after a court overruled his request to dismiss an election petition challenging the recent mayoral election. According to a report in 'The Guardian', High Court judges Justice Supperstone and Justice Spencer on Tuesday said they had reached the firm conclusion, for reasons they would give at a later date, that the petition was "not a nullity in whole or in part". Four petitioners, headed by Andy Erlam, who stood as a councillor on an anti-corruption ticket, had filed an election petition. They sought cancellation of the election results following widespread allegations of fraud and intimidation, the London-based newspaper reported in its web edition. They claimed Rahman’s team used a “variety of forms” of fraud when he won the mayoral election by 3,000 votes in May. But lawyers for Rahman applied for the petition to be dismissed as an abuse of process. They said that in breach of the relevant rules, sufficient particulars of the allegations were not given, the report said. However, the court granted the petitioners a trial and asked them to produce further particulars of the allegations in the petition by August 18. The court also dismissed petitioners’ plea for the case to be heard outside Tower Hamlets, according to bdnews24.com.