The government today made it clear that BlackBerry services may be banned if its maker, Research-in-Motion, fails to provide a monitoring solution in the next five days.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Telecom Sachin Pilot said, "In case no solution is provided, those services which can not be intercepted and monitored in readable format may be banned by the government."

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has instructed all telecom service providers to ensure that a technical solution for interception and monitoring of Blackberry services in readable format is made available to the law enforcing agencies by August 31, 2010.

The minister's reply comes at a time when the security agencies and Canadian firm RIM are holding a crucial two-day meeting starting from today to decide the fate of Blackberry services in India.

The smartphone-maker, which has a subscriber base of one million in India, has been told in no uncertain terms that it must install its server with an Indian service provider.

On August 12, the Home Ministry had demanded a technical solution by August 31 that would enable security agencies to peek into emails and chat messages sent via Blackberry Enterprises Server (BES) and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).