TEHRAN -- Hard-line vetting body the Guardians Council Sunday approved a law passed by parliament to restore the annual time change in Iran, against the wishes of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad's government had, in March 2006, abolished the time change, arguing that there was no evidence to show that the annual shift had any effect on saving energy.

Since then, Iran's time has stayed the same in both summer and winter at GMT +3.5 hours.

But the Guardians' Council, which vets all parliamentary legislation, said that the law to restore the time change "was not against the constitution and Sharia [Islamic] law," official media quoted its spokesman as saying.

Under the law, Iran will add an hour to go into summer time March 21, and then lose the hour to revert to winter time September 22.

It was not clear when the change will be first imposed.

Ahmadinejad has had a rocky relationship with the current parliament which, while conservative-dominated, has not shied away from criticizing the government on occasion, especially over its economic policy.

Government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham had said that changing the time created problems for obeying religious rituals, and also for schoolchildren and students.

However, the decision to keep the same time all year round was criticized by parliament, which then approved a bill to restore the time change.

The hour change in Iran has been introduced under the deposed imperial regime of the shahs, and was not immediately applied after the Islamic revolution, as many clerics believed it inconvenienced worship.

However, the change was restored in the 1990s under the presidency of the pragmatic Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who believed it would help save energy in a country of notoriously high oil and gas consumption. -AFP