India is set to make a decision on whether or not to ban the instant messenger Blackberry. The decision will also be around whether to accept RIM’s limited monitoring of the service according to some officials with direct knowledge of the matter. There will be a meeting today where intelligence agencies and the home ministry will review the various proposals offered by RIM in the past week. Any solution according to RIM will have to ensure that the communications of the client are secure. This has been a selling point that has helped attract users including President Obama.

India which is the fastest growing mobile market in the world, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have all threatened to curtail the messaging services of Blackberry, which will hamper its expansion outside Europe and North America. The stock of the company based in Canada has declined by 32% in US this year, underperforming compared to other rival Motorola and Apple Inc.

According to Romal Shetty, executive director at KPMG’s India unit’s telecommunication practice said that it is not just an Indian effect if Blackberry allows it to happen only in India. It will affect them in other countries too. This could also very well set the tone of how India will deal with other services which it wants to monitor including the email service offered by RIM to corporate customers. India is trying to find avenues to monitor the voice over internet protocol services which are run by companies such as the Skype Technologies SA and Google Inc. according to government official.

RIM will be giving limited access to its Blackberry messenger service beginning next month in order to address various security concerns. It will first give agencies some access to the messenger service on a manual basis, after the request by the government.