President Ilham Aliyev's ruling party has retained its majority in Sunday's snap parliamentary election, preliminary results showed Monday.

It was on course to win 68 out of 125 seats in parliament, according to preliminary results from the Central Election Commission reported by the TASS news agency. It had 69 seats in the outgoing parliament.

Just over 2 million people in the energy-rich nation cast their ballots, bringing the turnout at the time of the close of polling stations to 37.3%, said Central Election Commission chief Mazahir Panakhov.

Exit polls suggested dozens of other seats would go to candidates who are nominally independent of political parties but in practice back the government as well as to minor pro-government parties.

Rights watchdog Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) criticized the vote, claiming it had fallen well short of democratic standards.

OSCE election monitors said the election campaign had been "barely visible."

It was the first parliamentary vote since Azerbaijan reclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh, occupied by ethnic Armenians for three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Aliyev, in power since 2003, capitalized on that victory and won a fifth presidential term in February with more than 92% of the vote, according to election authorities.

It is rebuilding the region and resettling it with Azerbaijanis who fled during a war with Armenia in the 1990s. The Central Election Commission said about 42,000 people in Karabakh were registered to vote on Sunday.