The State Duma on Friday overwhelmingly passed the first reading of a bill setting out regulations for the 1996 presidential election.


The bill, which passed by a vote of 314 to 7, is essentially similar to the one used in the 1991 election which brought President Boris Yeltsin to power. However, it contains some important new rules which would have eliminated some of Yeltsin's rivals three years ago.


Among the new rules is a provision that a presidential candidate must collect 2 million signatures before being registered for the actual race. In 1991, it would almost certainly have eliminated Vadim Bakatin, who came in sixth with little more than 2 million votes.


Another tough rule sets a 7 percent maximum on the number of signatures for a candidate in any one region. That would have kept conservative regional leader Aman Tuleyev out of the race, since he received almost all his signatures and later votes in his native region, the vast Kemerovo coal basin.


Neither Bakatin nor Tuleyev have expressed a desire to run again. But extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was the dark horse in 1991 and came in a surprise third with more than 8 million votes, has voiced concern over the new restrictions.


Viktor Vishnyakov, a representative of Zhirinovsky's party, asked the official presenting the bill on Yeltsin's behalf whether the president would consider lowering the number of signatures if the Duma approved the draft. "In 1991, one only needed 100,000 signatures, and now the number has gone up 20 times," Vishnyakov complained.


But the official, Alexander Ivan-chenko, deputy head of the Central Electoral Commission which counts the votes cast in all nationwide elections, assured Vishnyakov that the figure was negotiable. Satisfied with his promise, Zhiinovsky's supporters made the legislature's support for the bill overwhelming.


Another of the bill's novelties takes into account the changes in the Russian economy since 1991. Candidates must raise their own campaign funds from private contributions.


In 1991, candidates received small, equal subsidies from the state to finance travel and the organization of rallies. With practically no commercials on television or in newspapers, no advertising budget was necessary, and candidates only got as much coverage as journalists' interest allowed them.


According to the new bill, a candidate is only allowed to amass a campaign fund equal to 250,000 minimum salaries, which currently would mean about 5 billion rubles ($1.5 million). The government still pays a candidate's travel expenses and, if the presidential hopeful gives up a job to campaign, provides a kind of unemployment benefit of up to 20 minimum salaries a month. However, if the candidate wants to take a taxi or charter a plane, he will have to provide his own funds. The bill does not allow candidates to accept donations from foreign citizens or companies that are more than 30 percent foreign-owned.