Iran's ex-president Akbar Hashemi- Rafsanjani said no candidate or political group has his support in the upcoming parliamentary elections, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday.

"As I have said before, in the next elections, I support no party, no candidate, nobody," Rafsanjani, also the chairman of Iran's Expediency Council, was quoted as saying.

The parliamentary polls are slated for March 12, where some 5000 candidates will contest the 290-seat legislature.

In the last parliamentary vote held in March, 2008, the authorities approved about 4,500 candidates and barred over 1,700 others due to their lack of loyalty to Islamic values and the Islamic revolution.

Iran's conservatives, who generally support the country's Islamic establishments and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, won an absolute majority in the 2008 elections, while reformists, who wanted better relations with the West, won far fewer seats.

Another ex-president of Iran Mohammad Khatami said in December that the reformists will not announce any candidates for the elections because "the conditions for the reformists to participate were not met."

Khatami said earlier that the reformists would only participate in the polls if all the reformist political prisoners were freed, the political atmosphere was open and the elections could be held with utmost transparency.

Iran's Guardian Council said recently that individuals who were linked to the protests following the 2009 presidential elections will not be eligible to campaign for the polls.

Protests gripped Tehran and other Iranian cities after the presidential elections, which were suspected to be rigged in favor of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.