Celebrity ballerina Anastasia Volochkova has been denied in her bid to register as a candidate for mayor of Sochi because she forgot to put her date of birth on a bank deposit slip when submitting the required entry fee, the ballerina said Friday.
 
Volochkova is one of several famous personalities who have announced their intention to run in the April 26 election. Sochi is slated to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, a project for which the federal government has earmarked billions of dollars. The next Sochi mayor will have a strong say over how the government will spend the money.
 
Volochkova, who made headlines in 2003 after she was fired from the Bolshoi Theater, reportedly because she weighed too much, told Interfax on Friday that she had been denied registration in the election on a technicality.
 
"They've already told me that I will be denied registration because I forgot to put my date of birth on the bank deposit slip for my election entry fee," Volochkova said, Interfax reported. "It is an absurd, illegal reason, and I will absolutely appeal this decision in court."
 
The decision by Sochi election officials "proves that my personality is threatening for certain other candidates," the ballerina told Interfax.
 
A spokeswoman for the Sochi elections commission told The Moscow Times by telephone Friday that Volochkova was denied registration but declined to state the reason for the decision.
 
Volochkova said in a statement on her web site that the missing date of birth date on the bank slip was the "official reason" for her rejection.
 
Volochkova alleged in the statement that a rival candidate, Dmitry Berdnikov, "managed to topple" her.
 
Berdnikov, a native of Kazan, said last week that he would go to court to remove Volochkova from the campaign, saying her documents were not in order, Interfax reported. He was also denied registration on Friday.
 
Volochkova, who has no political campaign experience but is a member of ruling party United Russia, has said that as mayor she would focus on issues such as transportation, electricity and sewage dumping into the Black Sea.
 
The Sochi elections commission Friday issued its final list of registered candidates. They include opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and prominent Moscow businessman Alexander Lebedev, who has a blocking stake in Aeroflot and is co-owner of the independent-minded newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
 
Acting Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov is representing ruling party United Russia in the race, while the Communist Party, A Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party are also fielding local candidates.
 
Major television and radio stations in the Black Sea resort of Sochi have refused to give airtime to candidates in the upcoming mayoral elections while providing coverage of Pakhomov, the web site Kavkaz-uzel.ru reported Thursday.
 
Nemtsov wrote on his LiveJournal blog recently that two radio stations had refused to broadcast his campaign ads under pressure from regional authorities.