Tory activists in a marginal seat hatched a postal ballot fraud in an attempt to rig the voting system at the last general election, a court was told yesterday.

Their “well-organised attempt to subvert the democratic process” involved applications for more than 1,600 postal votes at more than 100 properties – some of them empty and derelict – across Bradford. Many of the would-be voters did not exist, others had no idea that their names were being used and some had their ballot papers redirected to addresses controlled by the conspirators.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court was told that the plot’s “controlling mind” was Haroon Rashid, who had been an unsuccessful Tory candidate in Bolton at the 2001 general election. Two years later the British Airways sales executive was selected to contest the Bradford West constituency. This time, it is alleged, he decided to leave nothing to chance.

Gordon Cole, QC, for the prosecution, told the jury that six men, including Mr Rashid and two Tory councillors in Bradford, were involved in a conspiracy that was “illegal and dishonest”. One of them, Alyas Khan, 50, who was the deputy chairman of finance for the local Conservative association, has already pleaded guilty to electoral fraud. The others, Mr Rashid, 38, Jamshed Khan, 64, Reis Khan, 39, Mohammed Sultan, 51, and Mohammed Rafiq, 68, deny conspiracy to defraud the electoral registration officer.

All, Mr Cole said, “played their parts in this determined attempt to subvert the integrity of the postal voting system”. He said that the scam became possible after electoral law was changed in 2001 to allow anyone to choose to vote by post. Anyone on the electoral register was entitled to submit a postal vote application to their local electoral registration officer, who would send a postal ballot paper to the address listed on the application.

The Bradford plotters, who hoped to defeat the sitting MP, set about harvesting hundreds of guaranteed votes for Mr Rashid, Mr Cole said. From a web of addresses across the city, they applied for hundreds of postal ballots in the names of people who were listed on the electoral register but did not live at the relevant property. Many did not even exist.

In other cases, voters who had not sought a postal vote were to discover later that an application had been submitted in their name. A third technique involved people who wanted to vote by post, but did not receive a ballot paper because it had been redirected to one of a series of addresses used by the conspirators.

The plot was foiled by a police investigation during the run-up to the May 2005 general election. “Had this conspiracy carried on through to the end and been successful, then Haroon Rashid may very well have been elected as a Member of Parliament and been sitting in the House of Commons,” Mr Cole said.

The court was told that Mr Rashid, who failed to complete a business law degree at Huddersfield University, grew up in Bradford and had close links to the other defendants. He did not fill out any of the false postal vote applications, but his fingerprints were found on some of the forms. The jury was told that the all of the defendants were linked to the conspiracy by scientific evidence, including fingerprints and handwriting analysis.

Some of the applications were dated February 29 – it was not a leap year – and others on February 30. Mr Cole said that evidence would also be presented from a computer, found in Alyas Khan’s house, which contained “Postal Votes Haroon” files listing a significant number of the fraudulent applications.

The trial, which is expected to last ten weeks, continues.

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