(ANSA) - Milan, March 10 - Premier Silvio Berlusconi accused magistrates on Wednesday of discriminating against his People of Freedom (PdL) party by not allowing officials to file election documents, excluding it from regional elections in the Rome area.

Berlusconi said that two magistrates at Rome electoral offices had "astoundingly decided" that party representatives were "a centimetre beyond office boundaries" and were consequently late in filing papers at the noon cutoff on January 27.

Speaking at PdL headquarters a day after the Lazio region's TAR administrative court upheld a lower court ruling barring the party from running in the Rome province, he insisted that party officials were "inside the office within the cutoff time".

The PdL has meantime appealed TAR's ruling in the Lazio elections to the Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, which will review the case on March 13. Berlusconi said magistrates had not only committed "blatant errors" in applying election-filing laws but had also "broken common sense rules" while showing "a discriminatory attitude" against the PdL.

"They were overly strict with us while glossing over (election-filing) mistakes made by the centre left".

Members of the opposition Radical party created such a racket at the electoral office that they forced PdL officials to step away and preventing them from filing the documents, he charged. But in a show of confidence, the media magnate-turned politician said that despite "being penalised" by the pro-leftist magistrates, the centre right would nevertheless win the March 28-29 elections.

"Our candidates will teach the left a lesson. With our reasoning and our programmes we'll show that we can prevail over the evil, unfair and anti-democratic attitude of the left". He also announced plans to hold a major rally on March 20 in Rome "in defence of the right to vote".

But the gathering will also give centre-right candidates running as regional presidents in 13 of Italy's 20 regions the chance to commit themselves to improving bureaucracy, fostering constructions of homes and working "to plant millions of plants and trees so that Italy can return to being the garden it once was".

The premier brushed off suggestions that House Speaker Gianfranco Fini, who has distanced himself from Berlusconi with more liberal-minded stances, would not attend the rally because of continuing friction.

Fini, he said, had already stressed that House speakers do not attend any political gathering in keeping with their institutional role. Berlusconi also defended a controversial decree approved late Friday, setting guidelines on how courts should interpret election-filing procedures, saying it was in line with the country's constitution.

President Giorgio Napolitano, who has come under opposition fire for signing the decree, has said he approved it in a bid to give everyone the right to vote for the parties of their choice.

Antonio Di Pietro, leader of the Italy of Values (IdV) party, has accused Napolitano of backing a sort of legislative "coup" by signing the decree.

Despite the disqualification of the Rome PdL provincial candidates linked to her, centre-right candidate Renata Polverini is already on the ballot in Lazio.

She does not need a new ruling to run for governor, but PDL candidates in Rome and its province do.

Those candidates are already on the ballot in the rest of Lazio.

The regional elections are seen as a test for Premier Silvio Berlusconi amid signs that his popularity is slipping.

A poll published by the left-leaning daily La Repubblica on Wednesday showed his popularity has dropped to 44%, its lowest level since he took office in the spring of 2008 and far below its peak of 62% in October 2008.

Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, Berlusconi's closest ally, said that barring the PdL from running in the Rome area was a threat to the democratic process.

"You can't have an election without a major party. It seems to me that this is a way of undermining democracy".

He voiced satisfaction that a ruling by Lombardy's TAR overturned lower court's decisions banning the PdL and the League from running in the region because of bureaucratic irregularities.

TAR judge Adriano Leo said Tuesday that the decision giving Formigoni the go-ahead was "unconnected to the decree". s Leo said he had "not even read the decree", which was published Saturday as the court prepared to rule on the case.

Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani later told a news conference that Berlusconi's reconstruction of events at the Rome electoral office was "fanciful".

"The supposed can-do government has instead ended up being a confusion-making one," said Bersani.