Rules were tweaked to halt Tata take-off

New Delhi: In a bid to keep the Tatas out of the aviation space, successive governments had changed rules of the aviation game every now and then, just to justify their exclusion.
In 1995 when Tata-Singapore Airlines wanted to launch a domestic airline, foreign airlines were already investing in India. Kuwait Airways and Gulf Air had a 20% stake each in Jet Airways and the Rs 2,000-crore proposal of Tatas envisioned them holding the majority stake in the proposed carrier.
Interestingly, those foreign airlines were allowed to invest in air taxis as the Air Corporation Act was amended only in 1994 when the then air taxi companies became airlines . Though Ratan Tata's proposal never went past the FIPB, but a group as strong as the Tatas could not be left out without a valid reason.
So for two years, that is till 1997, nothing moved. Then the Deve Gowda government changed the rules, disallowing foreign airlines from investing in Indian carriers. Jet was given a certain timeframe to buy back the 40% from its two foreign airline investors .
The next Tata-Singapore Airlines' attempt to enter the Indian aviation space by bidding for Air India (just the international airline as Indian Airlines was a separate entity then) was also foiled.
16/11/10 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Nov 2010