PM counters Antrix oppn with calendar googly

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to have turned the tables on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led opposition today on the controversial Antrix space deal.

He told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that Forge Advisors, the company later hived off into its Indian subsidiary, called Devas, and which then entered into a deal with Antrix, the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) came in touch with the latter during the rule of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition in 2003.

Debunking the opposition charge that the Antrix-Devas agreement “was the mother of all sweetheart deals”, he said S-band space segment capacity should not be confused with terrestrial spectrum. “No allocation of terrestrial spectrum has been made by the government to either Antrix or Devas and the figures he has quoted have no basis in fact,” he said, referring to Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley’s charge that the country had lost hundreds of thousands of crores because of the deal .

The PM said the decision to open satellite services to non-governmental parties, Indian and foreign, was taken and approved by the government in 1997 (when his Congress party was not in the government). “Thereafter, the norms, guidelines and procedures to operationalise this policy, including the modalities for pricing of lease of transponders were approved in 2000 by the Cabinet of which the Leader of Opposition was himself a member of at that time,” he said. The pricing of the lease of the transponders in the agreement was made in accordance with these guidelines.

He said in December 2005, the Union Cabinet approved building of the GSAT-6 satellite, following approval given by the Space Commission in May 2005. The proposal sought approval for launching the satellite to offer a satellite digital multimedia broadcasting service. The capacity was to have been used for strategic and social applications.

“The proposal stated that Isro is already in receipt of several firm expressions of interest by service providers for utilisation of this satellite capacity on commercial terms. Neither the Space Commission nor the Cabinet was informed of the prior agreement between Antrix and Devas and, therefore, there was no question of approving it,” the PM said.