Iran parliament mulls changing capital

TEHRAN - Iran's Majlis (parliament) voted on Tuesday for the generalities of a plan which calls for changing the political and administrative capital of the country, official IRNA news agency reported.

The plan, if receives final approval, will turn into a law which will enforce the formation of a council to study the new location of the political and administrative capital of Iran.

Iran urges the decentralization move following the problems like overpopulation, severe pollution, high rate of crimes 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. Centralization 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.