Teheran – Ali Motlaq, Secretary of the Iranian Guardian Council, said the country would hold the parliamentary run-off elections by the end of April, to fill the remaining vacant seats.
He said on |Monday in Teheran that the Guardian Council as the highest legislative body of the country had agreed for the second round of parliamentary elections to be held on April 29.
Motlaq said in the run-off race, 138 contestants would compete for the rest 69 seats, while 221 out of the 290 seats were filled up in the first round of the polls held on Feb. 26.
He said the reformists and moderates had gained ground in Iran’s Friday vote for Majlis, although none of the heavy weight political groups had been able to seize a majority in the first round.
The secretary noted that in the 2012 Majlis race, the loyalists to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and powerful clerics won the majority of about 75 per cent in the first round of the votes.
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Interior Minister, Abdolreza Fazli, said earlier this month that the turnout in the first round, out of about 55 million eligible voters, was around 50 per cent in capital Tehran and some 62 per cent across the country.
He, however, said that in 2012, the turnout in the first round was more than 64 per cent out of some 48 million eligible voters. (Xinhua/NAN)