Fipb Defers Decision On Tata Airline Till August 22

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board yesterday failed to meet, deferring any decision on the controversial Tata airlines proposal.

The meeting has now been postponed to August 22. The FIPB had already deferred the Tata airline project twice earlier since the BJP government has taken over.

Senior industry ministry officials said that the decision to postpone the meeting was taken since several of the secretaries who are required to attend the meeting were away.

This includes the newly-appointed finance secretary Vijay Kelkar and commerce secretary P P Prabhu who are both out of the country at present. It was also pointed out that the new secretaries had not had any time to examine the proposals. Kelkar is expected to return on Thursday.

 

The core group of the FIPB includes the finance secretary, commerce secretary, secretary for economic affairs in the external affairs ministry, chaired by the secretary, industrial policy and promotion. Certain other secretaries including petroleum secretary, secretary - SSI are among some of the invitees for the meeting.

The concerned ministry secretary is also required to attend the meeting. In this case, the civil aviation secretary left yesterday morning for Agra for an Airport Authority of India (AAI) function. However, it is understood that joint secretary A.P. Singh was to represent the secretary at the meeting.

Civil aviation minister Ananth Kumar could not be contacted since he returned late last night from the United States, left in the morning for Agra, came back in the afternoon and left directly from the airport for his constituency Bangalore. Sources however said that no written communication had been given from the civil aviation ministry to the FIPB on the project's compliance with the policy guidelines.

Interestingly, however, in the morning yesterday the meeting was scheduled to be held at 3.00 p.m. despite the fact that it was known that the two secretaries would be away and that in any case the new secretaries had not had time to study the proposal.

When questioned however industry ministry sources said that it had thought that the meeting would be held and had requested the earlier secretaries (who were changed on Friday night) to attend the meeting. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and the other secretaries, sources claimed, refused to attend the meeting since they were no longer operating in these capacities. They added that in fact 47 cases were on the agenda including the Tata proposal.

Civil aviation ministry sources said that they were not opposing the proposal in any way and that had the meeting taken place the proposal would have been cleared.

No further clarifications have been sought from the Tatas and the project, they said, meets the ministry's guidelines. Sources however said that this was now a political issue and that since Kelkar is expected to come only on Thursday, the proposal can be deferred yet again since he would not have had ample time to examine the proposal.

Hectic lobbying by Indian Airlines, Jet Airways and certain politicians that are backing these airlines is being blamed for the delay in clearing the Rs 1475 crore project, which has been blocked consistently by various governments including the Congress, the United Front and now the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition.

It was, however, expected that after the Parliament session the proposal would finally be given the go-ahead.