A councillor under investigation for election fraud has instructed two firms of lawyers over alleged defamation.
Brighton and Hove News has received communications on behalf of Chandni Mistry by leading libel lawyers Mishcon de Reya and a local firm of lawyers in the last seven days.
Both objected to not being given enough time to respond to requests for comment.
Cllr Mistry and her mother and fellow councillor Bharti Gajjar have failed to respond to repeated requests for comment on a series of stories we have published about them since October last year.
On Friday evening, shortly after we published a story about charges the pair are facing in India, alongside Cllr Mistry’s brother Brijesh Gajjar, an associate at Mishcon de Reya called us saying she had been instructed to object to the short timescale given for a right of reply.
After we detailed the many and varied attempts this publication has made to contact Cllr Mistry and her family, and how our numbers have been blocked, the call ended. Mishcon de Reya told us yesterday is it not instructed by Cllr Mistry.
On Tuesday evening, Hove firm Britton and Time emailed us to say it understood we were planning on publishing three stories on 31 January, with the intention of embarrassing Cllr Mistry before today’s full council meeting.
The unsigned letter, emailed by a client care executive, demanded to see those stories and said a response would be given on 6 February. No clue was given as to what the stories were about.
At the time the letter was sent, Brighton and Hove News itself was not intending to publish any stories about Cllr Mistry – although the local democracy reporter Sarah Booker-Lewis whose stories can be used by all participating local media was working on one story about auto-responses set up on their official council emails.
In a reply sent first thing yesterday, we said we would now be writing a story about both legal approaches, and gave a deadline of midday today for any response.
We also re-sent an email sent to both councillors by Sarah last week about the auto-response story, giving a deadline of midday yesterday. This story has not yet been published.
In a subsequent email sent yesterday at 12.19pm, solicitor Alex Harrison said: “We understand that you intend to publish three articles about our client, Chandni Mistry and Councillor Gajjar by midday today.
“Your arbitrary deadline for a response is wholly unreasonable. Our client and Councillor Gajjar have protected characteristics and, therefore clearly require more time to read, process and then articulate a response and replies.
“As such, we reaffirm that the deadline which you have set is entirely unrealistic.
“As set out in our letter dated 30 January, we are instructed to provide a substantive response.
“However, this will be within the time frame as set out in our previous letter referred to above, on or before 6 February, 2024.”
When Brighton and Hove News queried what the protected characteristics were that meant the councillors required seven days to respond, Mr Harrison said he had been instructed not to divulge that information.
Both councillors are or have recently been medical students, Cllr Mistry at Lancaster University and Cllr Gajjar at the University of Brighton. Cllr Mistry also wrote in the November issue of The Brightonian that she had taken her A-levels early.
Brighton and Hove News also asked what the subject of the three articles that Cllr Mistry believed we were intending to publish were. We have yet to receive a response to that question. A hard copy of the letter giving a deadline of yesterday to supply the stories was delivered by post today.
Today’s full council meeting begins at 4.30pm and will be webcast here.
Cllrs Gajjar and Mistry must turn up to at least one full council meeting before April 18 to avoid falling foul of the requirement that councillors must attend at least one meeting every six months. If they fail to do this, their seat is automatically vacated.
Including today’s meeting, there are four full council meetings in the calendar before that date.
They’re hiding behind their lawyer’s skirts. Trying to scare-off public scrutiny and silence the ‘fourth estate’…
I agree with you Rostrum. I’ve yet to see a news reporter be scared off by a lawyer. Quite the opposite, it’s basically asking to have the next six months dedicated to their malpractice.
After Nadhim Zahawai (Tory MP) tried to silence a reporter by using lawyers it was revealed that quite a lot of news reporters are scared of by a lawyer if they have any element of doubt about the story.
But you don’t hear about it because it isn’t reported for obvious reasons.
I just re-read this to make sure it wasn’t a dream , no, – they are hiding behind “protected characteristics”. It can only be that they are claiming that they do not speak English well enough. Oh my.
Bit worried that the author of this story appears to have doxxed herself by not censoring her home address on the letter??
Hi, that’s not my home address – it’s the company’s registered address, publicly available, not least on this website
I wonder who is paying the legal bills here?
As suspected, the mega-expensive and prestigious Mishcons confirms that it hasn’t been instructed by this person. As for the timescale matters, both councillors have had very many weeks to comment on or respond to important issues that have been raised – such as where they actually live and providing the relevant local addresses – and substantiating the bona fideof their declared ‘appointments and qualifications’ – and they haven’t done so. Gajjar in particular has said nothing at all, even if she were contactable. As far as I’m aware, nobody, especially a regulated law firm, is entitled to suggest /imply that they are acting for the complainant’s mother, as well as the complainant, when the mother is an adult who could instruct the local solicitors herself, but doesn’t seem to have done so.
What has indisputably happened, though, is that both councillotr have radically changed (i.e. reduced very drastically) the information that they originally declared on the council website regarding their appointmenta and qualifications, so that Ms Mistry in particular now only admits to having an undisclosed interest in land and membership of the GMB, rather than the string of ‘qualifications’ she claimed to have previously.
Stick to your gunns, Jo (and Frank), particularly as you seem to be as totally bewildered as the rest of us by all this ill-advised legal bluster and I, for one, have no reason to doubt your journalistic integrity.
They are both at today’s full council meeting so we are stuck with them. Kemptown & Queen’s Park deserve better than this Labour orchestrated pantomime.
I’d recommend continuing to evidence any and all malpractice from these Cllrs, whenever they fail to respond, whenever a lie is exposed, whenever harm is caused from their inaction, whenever they break their code of conduct.
Quick update. They both left the meeting just short of one hour. Did just enough to claim allowances and ‘represent’ their wards! What a joke they are making of our local democracy.
I love this article. There are so many idiots who think by instructing a solicitor or debt collector or whatever other nonsense that they can shut other people down and lie and cheat the system.
The cold hard fact is this. Only a court can tell you what to do, end of
The allowances are hardly going to touch the sides of a Mishcons invoice (and Mishcons deny they’re involved, they being more used to dealing with clients like the late Princess of Wales) or even the sides of a local solicitor’s invoice. My only suggestion is that the police just get on with their job pronto and decide whether or not these people should be prosecuted. How difficult is that???????? May not be that important to them, but it is to the wards concerned and to B&H nore widely.
Civil case for misrepresentation might be a runner, because both of them have grossly misrepresented their qualifications etc on the council website – now corrected radically – but somebody (taxpayers?) would have to foot the bill.
Many years ago, in my job, we had an ill-informed and very impolite (no, I’ll say threatening, because he was) letter from an MP (Lib Dem, later a Coalition minister who may or may not have had something to do with the Post Office/Royal Mail sell-off, but I’m not accusing anyone of anything) accusing us of all sorts of dastardly (but very minor) financial stuff towards one of his constituents. This was all totally false and we had the paperwork to prove it. He’d just believed everything this dodgy person had said without any evidence whatsoever and got extremely nasty with us, as if being an MP carried some weight – it didn’t, especially in his case, as he couldn’t be even halfway civil and thought, very wrongly, that we;d just roll over from his ill-advised and rude bluster.. After we sent off the evidence refuting it all, we never heard from either of them again, although some sort of semi-apology from the MP would have been nice.
The point is, though, that, rightly, B&H News should not give in or even respond to this.
Meanwhile, Gary Wilkinson, who is allegedly a Kemptown counciilor, but who is pretty invisible but has made the odd comment about visiting Gajjar’s local abode – WHERE IS IT THEN, GARY?? – and did a photo op with her that was more Hove than KT. Any comment, Gary???? Thought not.
Britton & Time are probate solicitors. What area of expertise do they have in defamation.
It’s a pretty poor lawyers letter that doesn’t cite a specific law and clause within that law that they allege B&H News has broken.
Is that because they know B&H News hasn’t broken any laws and are just hoping to bully.
Is “go do one” am appropriate response to this letter?
I am just amazed that these two after being fired would not just apologise and say they had made a mistake and move on. the internet will be full of stories that will follow these two for the rest of their lives as showing complete lack of integrity. The younger of the two could have just moved on gracefully and apologised and that would have been the end of it and now she will be damaged goods.
I am also amazed that the labour party have not stepped in to offer someone to represent residents in Kemptown on committee meetings etc after choosing these two as candidates.
The behaviour of these councillors leaves a bad taste, but more important for me is that there are local reporters, whether at this site or independent, that still doggedly pursue the truth and resist the Trump world view that there are no facts, no truth, and everything is bad so just don’t vote at all and don’t expect anything if public servants. So thank you to all involved.
Absolutely baseless attempt at libel. B and h news could do all of us a favour by running with this case and exposing these shysters to a bigger audience
Shes cute
Wonder how long until they use the race and gender card. Like Ali G said…Izit coz I iz not white? Izit coz I is a women?
They may have already : “protected characteristics”…
I was going to say, that happened; in so many words!
Thank you Brighton and Hove for your excellent and up to date reporting.