India's powerful communist parties have blocked a government move to increase foreign direct investment caps in telecoms and domestic aviation, newspapers said on Friday.
The Congress-led coalition was due to discuss the plan to raise foreign investment limits in the telecoms sector to 74 percent from 49 percent, and from 40 to 49 percent in aviation at a cabinet meeting on Friday.
But pressure from the left parties, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who are the biggest allies of the minority government forced the issue off the agenda, the Economic Times said.
"We are expressing our concern. There is nothing secret about this. We have already made it public," the Hindustan Times quoted CPM leader Sitaram Yechury as saying after a round of meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.
A cabinet nod on increasing FDI limits in the cash-guzzling telecom and aviation sectors would have helped Singh showcase his government's ability to push through reforms during a trip to the United States beginning next week, newspapers said.