A RACE watchdog scandal which has already claimed the jobs of two Blackburn and Darwen Labour councillors has hit a leading Tory.

Coun Edna Arnold was the chairman of a Racial Equality Council selection panel which offered Labour Coun Mohammed Khan a £22,000 job within the organisation, even though he was already its chairman.

She has now been stripped of her posts as town hall Conservative spokesman on the personnel and rights, advice and entitlements committees and as Tory spokesman on the REC.

Coun Arnold will however remain on the REC until the Commission for Racial Equality has conducted an investigation into the body.

That inquiry was prompted by the resignation of a founder member of the organisation, Roy Martin, who accused REC director Abdul Hamid Chowdry of failing to circulate minutes from meetings.

Mr Martin also said elections to the organisation's executive committee had been surrounded by "wheeling and dealing." Coun Arnold's sacking will have to be ratified by a full executive committee meeting of the Blackburn Conservative Association on September 14.

She becomes the latest councillor to lose her posts as a result of the scandal after ex-Labour housing chairman Coun Mohammed Khan and his deputy Coun Dave Hollings, who also sat on the REC selection panel which offered Coun Khan the £22,000 job, resigned.

George Kirby, chairman of the Blackburn Conservative Association, said:" The Conservative party conducts its affairs in a democratic fashion and not by knee jerk reactions.

"Coun Colin Rigby has taken the action required of him as the Conservative council leader."

A special meeting of the executive committee on September 14 is expected to rubber stamp the action against Coun Arnold.

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