A disclosure to this effect was made by civil aviation minister Sharad Yadav in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday when he told members during question hour that there was no question of accepting the SIA offer under the new civil aviation policy.

Elaborating, Yadav said the policy debarred foreign airlines from investing in the domestic air transport services. Hence, there was no room for considering any CIA proposal.

It may be recalled that Singapore Airlines along with Tatas had made a determined bid to enter into the Indian civil aviation sector during the Congress regime headed by PV Narasimha Rao. The government, however, did not permit them.

The civil aviation minister, however, told the Upper House that NRIs or OCBs could take upto 40 per cent stake in the domestic air transport sector.

In course of his replies to supplementaries, the civil aviation minister admitted that the IA and AI needed to be strengthened in terms of their fleet size to improve their services. He saidIA would shortly dry lease five aircraft to strengthen the fleet size. A similar exercise was also on for AI which was also suffering from acute shortage of aircraft.He informed members that IA and Alliance Air had a total of 53 aircraft with an average age of 13.4 years while AI had a fleet of just 23 aircraft with an average age of 12.9 years. The minister further said that the government intended to support the private airlines in order to strengthen the domestic aviation sector.

IA, meanwhile, is carrying on its fleet expansion exercise having called for financial bids from Boeing and Airbus Industrie .