Good morning. This promises to be an eventful week, with the Cockroach Janta Party calling on the country's youth to protest against the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over mass deletions from the electoral rolls. They are timing the march for Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary.

In today's newsletter, the insurance regulator has proposed mega changes to fees and commissions for policy sales. But first, the intrigue and drama around the possible prospect of an Adani Airlines. Will Adani spread its wings? The Adani Group and the government appear to be engaged in an intricate tango over the group's airline ambitions. The issue first surfaced in July, when media reports suggested Adani was seeking a waiver from a rule that prevents the group, as the operator of Mumbai's main airport, from holding more than 10 per cent of shares in a scheduled airline.

At the time, Adani Enterprises, the group flagship company, strongly denied that it had plans to enter the airline business, telling the stock exchanges that reports otherwise were entirely baseless. The following day, however, The Economic Times reported that Arun Bansal, chief executive of Adani Airport Holdings, had asked the Airports Authority of India to waive the restriction in a letter on June 4. The letter said group company Adani Defence & Aerospace was evaluating the possibility of starting an airline as a natural extension of its aviation business.

Cut to last week. Speaking at an industry event in Delhi, civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said the government was examining the pros and cons of allowing airport operators to run airlines. He said it would be cautious given the conflict of interest that cross-ownership creates, but also made clear it wants more competition in a market where Indi Go and Air India account for more than 90 per cent of domestic traffic.

The Times of India last week quoted Bansal saying that as airport CEO he would not like to compete with his own customers. I asked Adani Enterprises at the weekend about the group's intentions, but did not hear back in time for this newsletter. It is worth noting that the restriction itself dates back to the 2006 privatisation of the Mumbai and Delhi airports. It was written into the specific agreements between the government and operators, and is not a blanket rule that is applied to every airport in the country. Indi Go co-founder and managing director Rahul Bhatia has vehemently opposed any relaxation. Bhatia sees airport operators owning airlines as a massive conflict of interest, since they control access to critical infrastructure such as airport slots and parking bays. He has also pointed out that there is no global precedent for an arrangement he says could ultimately hurt consumers. Several things are at play here. The government has to tread carefully because the company at the centre of the debate is Adani, one of India's most high-profile business groups. Any relaxation of a rule that could directly benefit it is therefore likely to attract political scrutiny. At the same time, the government has a legitimate argument for wanting more competition. Both Air India and Indi Go have had their own troubles in the past year. The question, then, is whether the government can devise a framework that addresses the conflict-of-interest concerns while allowing new capital into an industry dominated by two groups. It will be interesting to see whether a cabinet decision emerges.