Antrix-Devas report: Biased, says Nair

Bundled into the deal was 70 MHz of S-Band spectrum which was "grossly underpriced" at Rs 1000 crore.

Former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair and three other space scientists were blacklisted from all government jobs recently for their roles in the deal, triggering a row as Nair cried foul and said it was masterminded by the present ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan.

The report of the committee of Pratyush Sinha, former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, that has been posted on the site said the high level team on the balance of facts and evidence available in the records has come to the conclusion that G Madhavan Nair, A Bhaskaranarayana, KR Sridhara Murthi and K N Shankara, all of whom have retired, were responsible for various acts of commission.

The report said there have been serious lapses of judgement on part of officials and some actions verged on the point of serious violation of norms.

It said the deal was without consulting other government departments.

It said the deal lacked transparency and the approval process was riddled with inaccurate information given to Cabinet and the Space Commission.

Nair reacted on Sunday to the report in media.

"We should have full possession of the Chaturvedi committee report as well as of the Sinha committee report before commenting," he said, but alleged bias in the report that has been now in public domain.

"It is all prepared on certain bias. These statements are distorted and one-sided. Here it is saying you violated something, but not saying what is the procedure violated. Let them point out what was the mistake, error and loss to the government and I am prepared to accept it."

"S band spectrum was not scares on those days. No body was using it," Nair said.

He told reporters that the first-come-first-serve method was not wrong at that time and so not violated.


ISRO had earlier said it was trying to get clearance to release the reports by two committees that were set up to review the controversial Antrix-Devas deal.

The disciplinary action against Nair, one of the most famous Indian scientists, who was the force behind India´s maiden moon mission Chandrayan I, was in connection with his alleged controversial role in a deal between ISRO´s commercial wing Antrix and Devas Multimedia that had made the S-band available to the later at a low price.

Nair had said he would challenge the order in court as the probe into the episode is yet to be completed.

He said present chairman K Radhakrishnan has misled the government on the whole issue and was behind the action.

The Antrix-Devas deal had left the union government embarrassed as it had emerged that the contract under which the scarce S-band spectrum was allotted to the company Devas at a throwaway price was not scrapped even more than a year after different departments within the government had detected lapses in it.

The deal was annulled later after a media expose created an outcry.

Headed by K Radhakrishnan, who is now the chairman of ISRO, the Space Commission also decided to restructure Antrix.

ISRO ordered a review in December 2009 and subsequently, the Space Commission recommended its annulment on July 2, 2010, but the deal was not annulled immediately.