Comments
The two probe teams that in 2011 went into the contentious Antrix-Devas agreement of January 2005 have clearly slammed four former Antrix/ISRO brass, including the then ISRO Chairman, Mr G. Madhavan Nair, for serious irregularities in concluding the deal.
The deal was cancelled in mid-February last year for procedural and financial lapses, after Business Line and The Hindu exposed on February 7, 2011 what has also come to be called the S-band spectrum scam.
Late last night, the Department of Space/ ISRO put on its Web site the full report of the first probe panel, comprising Mr B.K.Chaturvedi and Prof Roddam Narasimha. In the Chaturvedi-Narasimha report, Volume 1 of the main report has been released but after cutting para 3.4.6. It says “Severed in accordance with Section 8 (1) (a) of the RTI Act of 2005”.
However, DoS/ISRO only partially released the conclusions of the other report, by the five-member Pratyush Sinha panel.
Fixing responsibility
The two panels were successively constituted by the Prime Minister's Office — the first in February 2011 and the other in May 2011. DoS falls directly under the Prime Minister's Office.
The panels were to determine any irregularities in the deal and to fix responsibility for any violations of norms. The Narasimha-Chaturvedi panel submitted its report within a month of its being formed, in March 2011. The Sinha panel submitted its report in September 2011.
The Sinha probe has squarely named former DoS Secretary and ex-officio Antrix Chairman, Mr Madhavan Nair; the then Scientific Secretary, Insat Programme Office and SatCom Programme Director, Mr A. Bhaskaranarayana; and Antrix Corporation's MD, Mr K.R.Sridhara Murthi, “as the individuals who were mainly responsible for leading the DoS and Antrix into this arrangement.”
BLACKLISTED
On Saturday afternoon, ISRO's current Chairman, Dr Radhakrishnan, reportedly got the PMO to clear the release of the two reports. They were uploaded around 11 p.m. on ISRO's Web site.
The move is seen by some as the Government's and Dr Radhakrishnan's defence of the recent action taken against the three technocrats and another former ISRO director, Dr K. N. Shankara.
Soon after being blacklisted by a January 13 DoS order, Mr Madhavan Nair publicly accused his successor of a witch-hunt. He claimed that the second panel, in particular, had been unfair and that the two reports should be made public in order to clear his name. Others on the Sinha panel were DoS's Dr Radhakrishnan; Mr R. Chandrashekhar, DoT Secretary; Mr Sumit Bose, Secretary, Department of Expenditure; and Ms Namita Priyadarshee, OSD and Director-Legal, DoS, as its Member-Secretary.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.