Iran parliament pushes for changing capital

Iran's Majlis (parliament) Tuesday voted for the generalities of a plan which calls for changing the political and administrative capital of the country, media reported.

The plan, if approved, will turn into a law which will then enforce the formation of a council to study the new location of the political and administrative capital of Iran, Xinhua quoted the official IRNA news agency as saying in a report.

Iran urges the decentralisation move following problems like overpopulation, severe pollution, high rate of crime and heavy traffic jam in Tehran over the past years.

Changing the capital has been at the core of discussions among officials and scholars in the past decades, but critics have been drawing on the financial burden of the plan and thwarted it.

Tehran, with around nine million population, is Iran's largest city. Centralisation policies of the Iranian government, after the Islamic revolution in 1979, have pushed hundreds of thousands of people to move to Tehran each year in search for job, good education, health care services, and a better life.