Tower Hamlets London Borough Council elections S. Lynch. A by-election for the ward of Stepney Green was held on 11 June 2015, after the sitting councillor, Alibor Choudhury, was found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices by an election court. A by-election for the ward of Whitechapel was held on 2 December 2016, after the sitting councillor, Shahed Ali, was found guilty of housing fraud. Another independent candidate, Ahmed Shafi, won the seat. Tower Hamlets London Borough Council elections Tower Hamlets London Borough Council, the local authority for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, is elected every four years. There were no by-elections. The by-election was
Monica Ali as characters in an English novel had the force of a defining caricature ... [S]ome of the Sylhetis of Brick Lane did not recognise themselves. Bengali Muslims smart under an Islamic prejudice that they are irreligious and disorderly, the impure among the pure, and here was a proto-Bengali writer with a Muslim name, portraying them as all of that and more. Greer criticised Monica Ali's "lack of authenticity", as she had never spent much time in the Brick Lane community, and no longer spoke the Bengali language fluently. The writer Salman Rushdie criticised Greer for getting involved, saying that her