Govt. yet to decide on Nair’s request for fresh probe: PMO

February 29, 2012 03:40 pm | Updated November 17, 2021 12:20 am IST - Bangalore

The government is yet to take a call on former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair’s request to the Prime Minister’s Office to order an inquiry into the reasons behind annulment of the controversial Antrix-Devas deal and the procedure followed.

Asked about Mr. Nair’s letter addressed to him in this regard, Minister in PMO, V. Narayanasamy told PTI that he has not seen it.

“He (Nair) writes a letter and gives it to the media”, he said. “Let me go through it and then we will decide.”

In his letter, Mr. Nair said on Sunday he had point-by-point explained vis-a-vis charges against him, including that he “put a least penalty clause” (in the contract) and that “defence requirements were not met”.

Noting that the B.K. Chaturvedi-Roddam Narasimha committee had probed all aspects of the deal till December 2009, Mr. Nair said he has asked the government to conduct an independent enquiry from December 2009 onwards on “what all happened”.

“I also told them (in the letter) that we lost a golden opportunity (by annulling the contract). What needs to be enquired into is the reasons for cancelling the contract and process and procedure that went behind that.”

“And also the recent ways of handling files by the Department of Space (with respect to the cancelled contract) have to be looked into,” he said, apparently wanting the government to throw light on the role played by ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan in cancelling the deal.

He said the Antrix-Devas deal was “such an excellent contract. It would have brought new technologies to the country. It (the satellite under the deal) was about to be launched. What forced them to make such cancellation and then create all this drama afterwards?”

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

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 The Hindu 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.