The spokesman of Principlist Coalition named hopefuls of the coalition in Tehran Province for the upcoming Feb. 26 elections.
Gholamali Haddad-Adel said on Sunday night that the list was approved in the ninth meeting of the coalition's council, which was held the same day and chaired by Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, secretary-general of the Combatant Clergy Association, IRNA reported.
Principlist Coalition is a body formed to organize the electoral efforts of principlist parties and help them preserve their majority in parliament.
Some prominent figures on the list are lawmakers Morteza Agha-Tehrani, Fatemeh Alia, Mehrdad Bazrpash, Ahmad Tavakkoli, Fatemeh Rahbar, Alireza Zakani, Esmail Kosari and Bijan Nobaveh, as well as Majlis Deputy Speaker Mohammad Hassan Aboutorabifard, former commerce minister Yahya Ale Es'haq, former Tehran mayor Mohammad Nabi Habibi, former education minister Hossein Mozaffar, former oil minister Masoud Mirkazemi and Haddad-Adel himself.
Of the 24 men and six women included in the list, 21 are current or former lawmakers and six have been minister. The Resistance Front of the Islamic Revolution with 12 representatives, Society of Devotees and Pathseekers of the Islamic Revolution with eight, YEKTA Front with three, Combatant Clergy Association with two, Islamic Coalition Party with two and other principlist parties with two members are featured in the list. Haddad-Adel wrote on Twitter on the same night that he hopes principlists in other provinces will receive the message of unity from Tehran principlists, encouraging them to accelerate efforts to announce their lists.
"We hope a Majlis will be formed that helps promote welfare and boosts employment rate for the young people, by making constructive criticism of the government in the post-sanctions environment," he said.
There are 290 seats in the Majlis, distributed between 207 electoral districts. With 30 seats, Tehran has the largest delegation of any district.
A record number of 12,123 individuals registered for the upcoming Majlis elections during the December 17-23 signup period, wherein Tehran province registered 2,477 candidates.
Siyamak Rahpeyk, spokesman for the Central Elections Monitoring Board, a body under the Guardians Council, said on Saturday that the number of nominees approved for the Majlis elections has reached 6,300, while Shahabeddin Chavoshi, the head of Tehran Election Headquarters, said on Sunday that the qualifications of 46% of Tehran hopefuls, or 1,261, have been approved.
Composed of six experts in Islamic law and six jurists, the Guardians Council investigates the candidates and is advised by different state bodies such as the Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Justice.
