A top presidential candidate in Chechnya was barred from running in next month\'s elections, thereby all but assuring victory for the Kremlin-backed man in Russia\'s war-torn republic. Chechnya\'s central election commission refused Thursday to register Malik Saidullayev as a candidate in the August 29 poll because his passport did not correctly list a place of birth -- the second time he has been barred from running. \"We have refused to register him,\" commission chief Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov told AFP by telephone from Grozny. Arsakhanov said 39-year-old Saidullayev was disqualified because his passport lists \"Chechen republic\" as a place of birth instead of \"Chechen-Ingush republic,\" which existed in 1964 when he was born. Chechnya and Ingushetia became separate republics of the Russian Federation after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. Russia\'s central election commission declined to comment on the decision of its Chechen branch, but Saidullayev said that he expected to be dropped. \"I expected that this was exactly the way it would turn out,\" he told AFP by telephone from France, where he is currently on a visit. \"The election commission followed orders that they were given, that\'s all there is to it.\" He said he was removed from the race because he had a real chance of winning the election and would not have followed orders from Moscow. Saidullayev, who enjoys broad popular support in the republic partly as a result of his humanitarian work with Chechen refugees, was considered the top rival of Alu Alkhanov, Chechnya\'s interior minister who has been backed by the Kremlin. It is an open secret in Chechnya that a man cannot be elected to lead the republic without Moscow support. The last three elections held in the republic have all featured Soviet-era turnout figures and victory margins of at least 85 percent. The August 29 elections were called after the previous pro-Kremlin leader of the Muslim republic, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in an explosion during a military parade in Grozny on May 9. (AFP)