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KHAN DEMANDS POLICE PROBE INTO POSTAL VOTE CLAIMS

05-05-2008

The councillor at the centre of the latest allegations of postal voting fraud in Birmingham has asked the police to investigate.  Ayoub Khan, a Liberal Democrat member of the city’s ruling coalition, claims he’s the victim of a smear campaign and says he he’d welcome a re-run of Thursday’s local election poll.

Today’s Mirror newspaper claims that residents of the Sixways hostel in Aston were illegally forced into voting for Khan against their will – although the paper admits there’s no evidence he had any personal involvement (http://tinyurl.com/4c5b97).

The report quotes 21-year old Ian Middleton, who says: “The manager brought out these voting forms…I could see my name on this and he said ‘Sign It.’

“He’s the gaffer so I wasn’t gonna question him.  I said ‘I was gonna vote BNP’ but he said, ‘Just Sign It’ so I did.”

Mohammed Afzal, who owns the hostel, denies forcing anyone to vote, and there’s no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

The news comes just weeks after Khan was criticised by an Electoral Court, investigating allegations of malpractice in Aston in 2006 (see link here).

He has also drawn flak for submitting 200 postal voting applications and 150 voter registration forms little more than an hour before the deadline for this year's poll (see link here and here)

Khan, though, insists he’s the victim of a concerted campaign to discredit him by Labour.

He says the party is frightened that he'll take the Ladywood seat at the next election when Clare Short stands down.

Khan claims there’s family link between a Labour activist and a senior figure at the hostel, and points out that if someone wants to “frame” a candidate by submitting a fake postal vote in their name it is very difficult to police.

“I’ve said since 2004 [when Labour were involved in mass vote rigging] that I want the Aston election re-run without postal votes.”

Asked if he would be happy to submit to a re-run of this year’s ballot he stated categorically: “I would be happy to have this, because I would win.

“There has been a smear campaign against me, but the electors of Aston showed they could see through that”.

Khan said that he has passed his concerns to West Midlands Police.