TEHRAN. Mar 2: Allies of Iran winning a single race, according to preliminary results, reports AP.

The tally from Friday's voting for thousands of municipal council seats elsewhere in Iran may not be counted for several

But the preliminary figures, released Monday, prompted the hard-line chairman of the electoral supervision board to announce that he would challenge the results.

With more than half the votes counted Monday, loyalists of President Mohammad Khatami won 12 of the 15 seats in Tehran, the focus of the struggle between hard-liners and moderates in Iran's Islamic government.

Independents won the other three seats In the vote, the country’s first local elections since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"We will definitely nullify the votes of those candidates who were disqualified by us ahead of the polls and were illegally allowed to run by the Interior Ministry." said Mohsen Yahyavi. the head of Tehran Supervision Board.

The board, which is dominated by hard-liners, disqualified about 50 candidates, mostly moderates, before the elections. But Khatami ruled the disqualifications illegal and instructed the Interior Ministry, which ran the elections. to let the candidacies stand.

Several of the front-runners in the Tehran results, including the popular former Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri, were on the board's disqualified list.

It was not clear whether the electoral supervision board or the Interior Ministry would prevail in the dispute. Both organisations claim to have the right to supervise the polls.

Election officials had counted about 15 million votes, or 60 per cent of the ballots, by Monday. Tehran radio reported.

The ministry says find! results may not come before Friday, especially in larger cities like Tehran. In some towns and cities, the turnout was so high that polling stations ran out of ballots and voting hours had to be extended.