The Pioneer:Thursday, January 26, 2012.
Sparing its own officials, the Government has blacklisted former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair and three other top scientists from re-employment for their alleged role in the Antrix-Devas deal. The unprecedented action was based on the report of a probe committee set up by the Government after the scandal broke last year. The committee was headed by former CVC Pratyush Sinha.
The order by the Department of Space mandates that Nair and three other officials “shall be excluded from re-employment, committee roles or any other important roles under the Government”.
The decision is understood to have been backed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was criticised by the Opposition over the scandal since ISRO came directly under the PMO.
“These four former officers shall be divested of any current assignment/consultancy with the Government with immediate effect,” the order dated January 13 said.
After this order, Nair cannot continue as Chairman, Board of Governors of IIT-Patna. “He’ll have to step down. There is no choice for him,” said an official of the HRD Ministry. Nair, a Padma Vibhushan awardee, said he was keeping all legal options open.
Nair was head of ISRO and Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman Space Commission. The other three officials against whom action has been taken are A Bhaskaranarayana, former scientific secretary at ISRO, KR Sridharamurthi, former managing director of Antrix, ISRO’s commercial arm, and KN Shankara, former director of the ISRO Satellite Centre.
At the heart of the controversy was the decision of Antrix to enter into a highly lopsided deal with Devas Multimedia, a private venture, in 2005.
Under the deal, Antrix was to provide 70 MHz of the scarce S-Band space segment to Devas for its commercial multimedia/broadband services. This was to be done by leasing 90 per cent of the transponders in satellites GSAT-6 and GSAT-6A that are proposed to be launched by ISRO. Devas, in turn, was to pay Antrix a meagre total of $300 million over 12 years. This was seen as a one-sided deal and the Government was estimated to lose over `2 lakh crore through under pricing.
In mid 2008, the FIPB under then Finance Minister P Chidambaram gave the nod to Devas Multimedia, floated by MG Chandrasekhar, former Scientific Secretary of ISRO, to bring in 74 per cent foreign investment. After that 17 per cent stake in Devas was acquired by Deutsche Telekom for $75 million.
The application for foreign investment was cleared by PMO, which routed it to FIPB. Several international companies like Columbia Capital and Telecom Ventures were in the queue to get shares of the little known Devas Multimedia, when it clinched the bumper deal with ISRO and got FIPB clearance at lightning speed.
It is widely reported that all files from ISRO and Space Commission were ratified by then Principal Secretary TKA Nair, before it reached the Prime Minister’s Office. After the controversy broke, the PMO denied access to information under RTI, citing the ongoing probe.
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