The committee’s three-day meeting was scheduled this week between Tuesday and Thursday. The meeting schedules are drawn in advance for a given fiscal year as per law.

While RBI has not stated the reason, it seems lack of quorum is behind this postponement.

The MPC is a six-member team with three members from RBI and three external. The government gets to appoint the external members, and it has not done so despite the tenure of the previous three members ending last month. This means that the MPC does not have the quorum of four members to go ahead and meet. What has attracted angst from the market is that the government knew that the tenures of the external members are coming to an end well in advance.

To be sure, analysts are not expecting a rate cut at the meeting. However, guidance on growth and inflation is keenly awaited by the market. With a pandemic raging, the central bank’s forecasts on growth and inflation hold importance.

So far, the MPC has not given an explicit forecast for the current year, citing the need for more data prints.