A disgraced councillor found guilty of pestering a woman on a bus is standing for election again in May.
Jackie Burns, who was branded a “nuisance drunk” by a sheriff, wants to serve an another term on South Lanarkshire Council.
Burns, a former deputy leader of the local authority, was last year convicted of breach of the peace after making a grab for a woman when she sat alone on public transport.
The woman said she had been travelling home from Hamilton to Stonehouse after work when Burns accosted her.
She told Hamilton Sheriff Court: “It made me feel really, really uncomfortable and I tried to block him out.”
He was cleared of sexually assaulting the woman, but was hit with an anti-social behaviour order, which banned him from public transport while under the influence.
The sheriff told Burns: “You were what might traditionally be called a nuisance drunk.
"It’s everyone’s nightmare, particularly a woman’s in the present climate, when the only other passenger on the bus touches her uninvited on a number of occasions and invades her personal space with unwanted attention."
It came four years after Burns was convicted at the same court of repeatedly staring and gesturing at a 17 year old girl on a bus.
He was chucked out of the Labour party at that point and has sat as an independent since 2017.
He was also fined in 2015 for urinating in public in Hamilton.
Official paperwork shows he is standing again in Larkhall in May.
A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: “This behaviour is completely unacceptable. It is completely inappropriate for an individual like this to be holding public office.
“He has a brass neck putting himself forward again and will be roundly rejected by voters at the ballot box.”
Burns declined to comment on his candidacy.
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