As the six-year-old Devas-Antrix deal unravelled last week, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) top brass was hard-pressed to do firefighting on allegations of irregularities, a charge the space agency has probably never faced before.
Last Monday, Isro chief K Radhakrishnan cancelled his lecture at the biennial Aero India seminar while the space agency put out a short statement on the status of the deal late that evening. The next day, Radhakrishnan hurried to Delhi for a press conference to explain the details of the January 2005 agreement to lease S-band transponders to Devas Multimedia and the space commission?s decision to annul the contract. In between, he had to cancel his meeting with US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke who was in Bangalore ahead of the air show. Locke?s visit came a week after the US Commerce department removed Isro and DRDO labs from the entity list.
The space agency next followed it up with a detailed note on Thursday, explaining for the first time the fine print of the contract?including its value and Antrix?s liabilities in terminating the deal. By then, Devas began its own disclosures and followed Isro by shuttling to Delhi. It first came out with a detailed chronology of the events since 2003? when it began talking to Antrix to commercialise a niche technology of transmitting video and data through satellites to mobile receivers on S-band radio frequency?up until 2010. It next wrote to the PM. On Friday, it put out a company video of the CEO answering the FAQs of the deal.
In defence of its allocation, Devas has claimed that though it did not bid for transponders, it was not the only company that had approached Isro to tap a potential market for these Mobile Satellite Services (MSS). Similar discussions between Antrix and two other companies had apparently not progressed any further, according to the company.
Radhakrishnan, meanwhile, explained that a decision had been taken in December 2009 to review the Devas-Antrix deal because of the emerging requirements of the country, mostly strategic applications and societal purposes. But Isro?s note also says that the chairman set up a committee to review the deal ?on receipt of complaints on the implementation of the agreement?. Incidentally, the review was ordered just a month after Radhakrishnan took over as the Isro chief.
So, what were the complaints? While the space agency says no financial loss has taken place yet and that the deal is going to be annulled, the exact implications of the deal would perhaps need more unravelling.