( dpa ) - The Tehran governor's office Wednesday corrected the number of the rejected candidates for Iran's parliamentary elections.
The governor's office had said Wednesday that more than 390 out of a total of 1,400 candidates in the Tehran constituency had been rejected by the constitutional watchdog Guardian Council.
Tehran governor Hossein Tala however told the ISNA news agency that 109 candidates had been rejected and the remaining 280 had been rejected for technical reasons such as not having attached the required documents to their application forms.
The number of the approved or rejected candidates for the provinces has yet to be disclosed.
The rejected candidates for Tehran and its suburbs would have four days to appeal against the Guardian Council's decision, the governor said.
Tehran has 30 seats and is considered the most important constituency.
There have been no details yet on the rejected candidates, but it is expected that most belong to the reform wing close to former president Mohammad Khatami.
More than 7,000 candidates had registered nationwide for the March 14 elections. At stake are a total of 290 seats.
The ideological qualifications of all candidates are vetted and approved by the six clerics and six lawyers of the Guardian Council.
As all the 12 council members are considered by the opposition as ultra-conservative and pro-Ahmadinejad, there has been a general fear that as in previous elections, a significant number of reformist candidates would once again be disqualified by the council.
For the 2004 polls, the council disqualified more than 2,500 reformist candidates without providing any plausible reasons.
The main race was expected to be between the reformist-moderate coalition and the conservative camp close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In recent weeks however the conservative camp has also voiced criticism of the president's policies indicating that even a conservative victory would not necessarily prepare the ground for Ahmadinejad's re-election in summer 2009.