Am election official has told a hearing into allegations of vote-rigging in Birmingham how three boxes of ballot papers "suddenly appeared" in the counting hall. Mohammed Sadiq, a polling officer, said all the votes they contained were for Labour. He was giving evidence at a High Court hearing into claims of postal ballot fraud in the Bordesley Green ward at last June's local elections. Mr Sadiq works for The People's Justice Party which has petitioned the court, claiming its candidates would have won if fraudulent votes had been disallowed. The three Labour councillors - Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan and Ayaz Khan - and Birmingham City Council's returning officers have denied any wrong-doing. They walked out of court saying they would take no further part in the proceedings after the Labour Party withdrew funding for their legal team. Mr Sadiq said there were separate tables for the polling station votes and the postal votes in the counting hall at the National Indoor Arena . "At 11am, I noticed three black boxes without lids had suddenly appeared on the postal votes table. "I asked where they came from and were told they had been delivered to the election office," he said. "They contained between 1,500 and 1,700 votes and I wondered how so many came to the office. I checked about 300 and they were all for Labour." Mr Sadiq said he raised concerns the votes were not checked properly to marry up the numbers on the envelopes with those on the ballot papers. The returning officer, Lin Homer, chief executive of Birmingham City Council, and her election officer John Owen decided to include the boxes. Philip Coppel, counsel for Ms Homer, said: "There is no doubt in the returning officer's mind that they made the right decision." Mr Coppel claimed the "innuendo" that they had been "secreted into the count by Labour Party supporters is simply untenable". However, Richard Mawrey QC, the deputy High Court judge presiding over the hearing at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, said: "There is no doubt that the circumstances in which these boxes appeared was such as to cause a major row at the time." | 
