India, Sept. 12 -- The Reserve Bank has rejected Tata Sons' application to surrender its non-banking finance company (NBFC) licence, which will force a public listing of the holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group, sources said on Saturday.

In a letter received by the Company Secretary and Chief Financial Officer on Saturday, the RBI specified that the group does not meet the necessary criteria, leading it to reject the March 2024 application for deregistration.

This makes a public listing of Tata Sons imminent as it qualifies as an upper layer NBFC, which must mandatorily list on the stock exchanges.

A response was awaited from the Reserve Bank when reached out for comment. Tata Sons also did not respond immedi...