Iran's conservative hard-liners have an unchallengeable lead over their rivals in the first round of the country's parliamentary elections, preliminary vote count of the polls shows.

However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters, who were backed by influential conservative clerics in the 2008 elections, seem to have been dealt a severe blow by their former allies.

In the 2008 elections, Iran's conservatives, who generally supported the country's Islamic establishments and President Ahmadinejad, won a majority of 68 percent, while reformists who wanted better relations with the West won far fewer seats, about 18 percent. The rest went to the independents and religious minorities.

After the controversial victory of Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential elections, divisions within the conservative camp surfaced and the influential hardline clerics turned against Ahmadinejad, who was said to have defied the supreme leader and the clerics' authority.

Since then, a number of his aids have been prosecuted and in some cases have been detained and accused of deviating from the basic principles of the Islamic revolution.

The president has already been under the pressure of the parliament, and his cabinet members have been impeached a number of times.

Last week, the conservative-dominated parliament signed a motion to ask Ahmadinejad to attend the parliament to answer questions over what they called "irregularities" in his administration and in his domestic policies.

The move was one of the several times during the past months that the president's conservative rivals signed motions to question him. Previous motions were temporarily withdrawn due to some "considerations."

Some local observers believed that the move to summon the president to the parliament just ahead of the elections was an indication of power struggle among the conservative camp in the Islamic republic and was also aimed at practicing pressures on the president and his supporters.

Friday election was, in fact, a testing ground for the president and his supporters who were very much hopeful to, at least, share the power in the parliament and to run hopefully for the presidential race in 2013.

Local media reported on Saturday that the president's sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad, lost the election contest to her conservative rivals in her hometown Garmsar, a city in northeastern Iran.

Also in the rural areas and in the smaller cities of the country, which were the reference locations for Ahmadinejad in the past years for winning the votes, the favorable candidates of him have reportedly received an unprecedented defeat.

The would-be homogeneous texture of the parliament will even favor the hard-line conservatives in the absence of rival reformists.

Major reformist factions did not announce any listing for the elections saying that the current political space of the country is not open enough for the contests.

In December, Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami said that reformists would not announce candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections because "conditions for reformists to participate in the election were not met."

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

According to the latest results released by local media on Sunday, the loyals to the supreme leader and the powerful clerics, dubbed the United Front of Principlists, have won the majority of about 75 percent in the first round of the elections.

Iran's Interior Ministry said Sunday that, by the midday, 190 candidates have won seats of the parliament directly and the vote count is still underway in the big cities. The official results of the first round is expected to come out on Monday and the fate of the rest of the seats would be decided in the run-off contest which is usually held after several days when the first round is over.

Iran's Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said Saturday that the turnout of Friday's parliamentary elections was more than 64 percent out of some 48 million eligible voters.

"The preliminary data shows that the participation of people nationwide was 64.2 percent, which is unimaginable," said Mohammad- Najjar.

He said Iran's "enemies" invested a lot to discourage people from participating in the elections, but the people disappointed them by the high turnout.