Lutfur Rahman has become the executive mayor of Tower Hamlets for a second time, beating the Labour Party candidate.Rahman contested as a candidate of ‘Tower Hamlets First’, a political group he formed six months ago to fight the borough polls.He was first elected as the executive mayor of Tower Hamlets in 2010 as an Independent candidate.Lutfur beat the Labour candidate in the second choice of voting as no candidate has got more than 51 percent of the vote.A candidate needs 51 percent votes to win in first round.Tower Hamlets borough has a total of 181,871 voters. But only 86,542 (47.58%) exercised their franchise.Rahman bagged 37,395 votes, ahead of his nearest rival, Labour Party’s s John Biggs, who secured 34,143 votes.There were 10 candidates in the contest for the position of executive mayor.Besides, 45 councillors were elected for the Tower Hamlets local council. Local council elections were held across UK last Thursday. Labour Party and UK Independent party (UKIP) snatched away many councillor seats from Conservative and Liberal Democrats across the country.Labour Party now controls 81 local authorities (council) so far and gained 6, while Conservative lost control in 11 and Liberal Democrats in 2.Tower Hamlets has a largest concentration of Bangladeshis in UK. Rahman is first elected Bengali executive mayor in the borough.He was Labour leader for the borough but stood against the official candidate of the party as an independent in 2010 and got elected.The Labour went in for a determined campaign to woo the Bengali voters with party top guns like Ed Miliband turning at Brick Lane to push for candidate John Biggs.But Rahman won again and will run the Tower Hamlet borough for the next four years.
