The Pratyush Sinha report, set up to scrutinise the Antrix-Devas deal, had stated that it was very curious that the Union Cabinet was not informed that Antrix had already signed a deal with Devas, when in November 2005, the Department of Space sought approval for the construction of GSAT6, one of the two satellites to be built exclusively for Devas.
Further, ISRO had created an “erroneous impression” that it had received several firm expressions of interest from service providers for the commercial use of satellite capacity, when in fact it had already committed two custom-made satellites to Devas, the report says.
The Sinha report and that of B.K. Chaturvedi and Roddam Narasimha note that the agreement was not placed before the Insat Coordination committee (ICC), a body set up to recommend the utilisation of satellite capacities by non-government users, and, therefore, it was “a clear violation of the government policy.” The ICC had, in fact, not met since 2004, they noted.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Chaturvedi report, however, observed that space and terrestrial spectrum had to be considered and priced differently. Concerns over short-selling of spectrum or selling it cheaply had no basis.