Meanwhile, the Indian Airlines is believed to have joined the opposition to the proposed airline. It has informally been giving out numbers on how the proposed airline will hurt it. According to the Indian Airlines, if the Tatas were to be permitted to start an airline, the surplus in the market would be equivalent to having 26 unused aircraft per day. The seat factor would fall from the existing 49 per cent to just 44 per cent over the next two years.

FIPB sources said there had been no written or oral communication from the ministry officials. ``If on Monday, they attend the meetingwithout the response, the proposal will have to be deferred again,'' one official said.

The proposal has been deferred twice for four weeks already, each time simply because the ministry was not ready with its response. The ministry sources also said they had come under pressure from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Aviation which was divided in its opinion. While some members felt that a private airline owned by the Tatas would sound the death knell for the national carrier -- Indian Airlines -- others felt that rejecting the proposal would violate the spirit of the `open skies policy'.

The argument of the Tatas and their supporters, however, is that the Government has all along been permitting other private operators -- Jet and Sahara -- to expand their fleet, without considering the capacity factor.

A section of the standing committee also questioned the repeated changes being made to the policy and asked the ministry to clarify first its policy and then clear all private proposals inaccordance with it.