The inquiry into the 1985 Air India bombing has been delayed for about a month due to the ongoing wrangling over the public release of government documents.

Retired Supreme Court justice John Major, who is leading the inquiry into the bombing that killed 329 people, on Friday asked the lawyers of the commission and the federal government for a progress report on the effort to resolve the dispute by March 26.

Major said he would reassess the matter after getting the report and try to set a more precise timetable. It now appears that the hearing, which was to resume on March 19, will be put off till April 10.

Justice Major on Monday had said he might not be able to conduct the probe unless the government made public all documents. He had halted the proceedings on February 19 over the matter.

Under his threat of shutting down the probe, Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered his national security adviser to inform officials to be less restrictive with the documents.

Meanwhile, Justice Major called witnesses for whom he did not require documents.

Commission counsel Mark Freiman said on Thursday they have identified about 800 documents so far where they consider federal secrecy claims to be excessive.

He added, however, that negotiations in the last three weeks have produced an agreement with government lawyers to make more information available in about 100 of those cases, and work is continuing on the rest.