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OTTAWA — A rival campaign in the federal NDP leadership race is accusing candidate Jagmeet Singh of inflating the number of new party members he signed up.

Singh announced Tuesday he had signed up 47,000-plus new people, more than a third of the 124,000 the party says are eligible to vote this fall.

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But Charlie Angus’s campaign says this number doesn’t make sense, based on how many people were members of the party at the beginning of May before Singh entered the race.

“Looking back through the records of the updating of the party database, of the membership, we found that we are approximately around 41,000 around the end of March, as the party reported. However, by the beginning of May, the party had updated the database systems and the party list and we were at about 70,000 members at that point,” said Jesse Brady, a co-campaign manager for Angus.

The difference would be roughly 54,000 new members between early May and the party’s announcement this week. Singh’s number would leave only 7,000 new members signed up through other channels.