More than 130 new members of the Halifax Labour party have been disqualified from voting for the party’s general election candidate after suspicions were raised about their recruitment.

All but seven of the disqualified members are of Asian heritage, and joined six to 12 months ago in the same multicultural ward of Halifax, according to Linda Riordan, the outgoing MP, who resigned at the end of February.

Fifty have appealed against their disqualification, according to a local party source.

Riordan has demanded the new members be allowed to vote in hustings on Saturday to choose the new parliamentary candidate after national party bosses decided to disqualify them.

Under normal Labour party rules any local member can vote providing they have lived in the constituency for at least six months as a member. But a few weeks ago Labour suddenly changed the requirement to a year, disqualifying the 134 members.

One local member said a complaint was made to the regional Labour party alleging most of the new members had been recruited by the same person and their subs paid on the same credit card.

Some local members believe the recruitment was organised by those who want to control the selection of councillors in Park ward, which is currently represented by two men of Pakistani origin and one white British woman, Jenny Lynn. She was the only contender on the parliamentary longlist not to make the shortlist of five this week.

“All of these new members were vetted and accepted by Labour many months ago before I stepped down and have already been allowed to vote in a local election selection, so it’s only fair they should be allowed to vote for the parliamentary candidate too,” said Riordan, MP since 2005.

“You can’t take people’s money and not give them a vote. It’s wrong.”

Earlier this week, it emerged Riordan had complained to Labour HQ, alleging Keith Vaz, another Labour MP, was trying to interfere with the selection.

There was further controversy when Karie Murphy, the candidate favoured by the union Unite, failed to make the shortlist. Murphy, a former nurse from Glasgow and parliamentary assistant to Labour MP Tom Watson, was embroiled in a vote-rigging scandal over the parliamentary selection process in Falkirk in 2013.

Riordan has always sold herself on her local connections, telling the Guardian this week: “I have always represented Halifax at Westminster and not the other way around.”

Yet she admitted she wanted Murphy, who had no local links, on the shortlist, saying: “I thought she was a very good candidate.”

On Tuesday, the Labour national executive committee (NEC) special selections panel chose five candidates for an all-woman-shortlist. Susan Hinchliffe and Naveeda Ikram, two councillors from neighbouring Bradford, will go head-to-head in hustings on Saturday.

Ikram, the first Asian woman to serve as Bradford’s lord mayor, recently failed to be selected in Bradford West to fight George Galloway and ended up calling police after the selection turned particularly nasty.

They are up against local Calderdale councillor Dot Foster, Holly Walker-Lynch, who is press officer for a Labour MEP, and Jo Coles, special adviser to Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor. Coles lost to Riordan in the Halifax selection battle before the 2005 general election.

A Labour party spokesperson said: “Labour has a well-established process for selections. The NEC has decided on the shortlist for Halifax and assessed the suitability of the candidates, the wishes of the local party and the best interests of the Labour party.”