Antrix case against Devas' arbitration adjourned

Bangalore, Feb 9 (IANS) A local court Thursday adjourned the case of the Indian space agency's commercial arm, Antrix Corporation, seeking injunction against Devas Multimedia Services Ltd. proceeding in the International Court of Arbitration over its annulled S-band spectrum deal.

When the case came up for hearing in the additional city civil and sessions court, Judge D.B. Patil posted the case to Feb 25 for further arguments without passing any interim order.

Though the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) filed a similar petition in the Supreme Court under the sovereign right after the Bangalore-based Devas went for arbitration in July 2011 as per the contract terms, Antrix also filed a case in the local court for jurisdictional reasons.

"As Antrix is registered in Bangalore as a commercial arm of ISRO, we have moved the local court after the contract (singed in January 2005) was annulled in February 2011 and approached the Supreme Court when Devas went for arbitration in last July," a senior space agency official told IANS here.

The space agency's case in the apex court on the arbitration issue is scheduled to come up for hearing Friday.

Invoking national security reasons, the government scrapped the $300-million contract to allot 70 MHz of scarce S-band spectrum (radio waves) to Devas through the transponders of ISRO's proposed GSAT-6 and GSAT-61 communication satellites.

"Since the matter is in the courts and sub-judice, we will not be able to comment on the merits of the case," the official said.

The legal battle between Antrix and Devas comes in the wake of the government's Jan 13 order debarring the space agency's former chairman G. Madhavan Nair and three other senior space scientists from occupying official posts following their indictment by a five-member high-level team for allegedly committing irregularities in the spectrum deal.

The other three scientists are former scientific secretary A. Bhaskarnarayana, ISRO's former satellite centre director K.N. Shankara and former Antrix Corporation executive director K.R. Sridharamurthi.

Though Nair and his former colleagues slammed the conclusions and recommendations of the high-level team, headed by former Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) Pratyush Sinha, ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan stood by the team's report.

The prime minister, who is also in-charge of the space department, had set up the Sinha team May 31, 2011, to study the probe report of the two-member high-powered committee he constituted February 10, 2011, to inquire into violation of norms in the Antrix-Devas deal and fix responsibility for procedural lapses.

The controversial deal also came under scanner after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) estimated a revenue loss of Rs.2-lakh crore (Rs.2 trillion) to the exchequer if the operator (Devas) was allowed to use the allotted spectrum for providing digital services without being selected through a competitive bidding.