Barely weeks before polls in five states, the Cabinet on Tuesday proposed enhancing the ceiling on election expenses for Lok Sabha constituencies to Rs 25 lakh from Rs 15 lakh and for assembly seats to Rs 10 lakh from Rs 6 lakh.

The step has been taken following an advice to this effect from the Election Commission.

The commission's rational was that the price index had jumped nearly 1.5 times since the limits were last changed in 1998.

The Cabinet also decided to promulgate an ordinance to allow the delimitation commission to start the process of readjusting parliamentary and assembly constituencies based on 2001 census, instead of 1991, without affecting the number of seats allocated to states in the legislatives bodies.

In order to discourage bogus candidates and restrict the size of ballot papers, the Cabinet approved doubling the security deposit for general contestants to Rs 20,000. The deposit for Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe candidates will doubled to Rs 10,000, it decided.