Conservatives have consolidated their grip on Iran's parliament after run-off votes for undecided seats, state radio reported on Saturday, but reformists said the election process was biased against them. Conservatives won a majority of the 208 seats decided in the first round of voting in March for the 290-member assembly.
Run-off votes were held on Friday for 82 undecided seats and, as expected, those polls have not changed the overall outcome. Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was quoted by Iranian radio as saying conservatives took more than 69 percent of 287 seats decided, suggesting they held almost 200 seats. That is in line with the proportion announced after the first round.
The results of three parliamentary seats were annulled for unspecified reasons, Iranian media reported. Reformists said they won more than 30 seats in the first round. Before Pourmohammadi spoke, a reformist official said the group did "a little better than expected" in the run-offs.
"From the final results we have so far, 17 reformists have won seats in provinces (aside from Tehran)," Abdollah Naseri, an official from the main reformist coalition, said.
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