The two Chinese telecom firms wanting to do business in India are still under the scrutiny of the security agencies who will take a final call only after they get additional information sought from them.

A high-level meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar was recently held to discuss "in totality" the issues related to Chinese companies doing business in India in which recent hacking attempts from China were also deliberated upon, according to official sources. Some Chinese companies have raised security concerns in India.

The security agencies expressed reservations on allowing the Chinese companies in telecom and information technology citing the incidents of Chinese hackers targeting sensitive data on government web sites, they said.

Union Home Secretary G K Pillai will be chairing another meeting soon to have a thread-bare discussion on the issue.

A controversy had even broken over Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh's remark against the home ministry over its decision regarding the two Chinese telecom companies,

In a recent meeting with officials of Chinese telecom company ZTE, the Home Ministry had sought clarifications and additional information before giving green signal to the use of its equipment in India.

ZTE and Huwaei Technologies are the two Chinese telecom companies whose equipment evoked security concerns in India.

Though ZTE has already given certain clarifications and have said they sell their equipment to other countries too, it has so far failed to satisfy the security agencies, sources said.

Sources said the Chinese are aware that the border areas and certain other parts of the country will be restricted areas for them but want a level-playing field in other sectors.

Pillai had said that India's norms for foreign telecom companies for doing business in the country were not loaded against China and every proposal is decided on a case-by-case basis.