Scientist quits over Isro row

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

New Delhi, Feb 24: A leading aerospace scientist has decided to quit India's Space Commission after what appears to be his disappointment with the government's decision to punish four former senior space officials for their role in a satellite deal scrapped last year.

Roddam Narasimha, who has sent his request to the Prime Minister, has been a member of one of two government panels that had probed the satellite deal between India's space agency and Devas Multimedia, signed in January 2005 and cancelled by the government in February 2011.

The government had last month instructed the space department to deny the four former officials, including former Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief Madhavan Nair, any governmnent assignment or consultancy, citing their roles in the deal.

Narasimha, a former director of the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, who has been a member of the Space Commission for nearly two decades, said there are two reasons for his request.

The actions against the former space officials "could demoralise the Isro scientific community and adversely affect its ability to take the kind of technological initiatives — not always without risk — that are the hallmark of an innovative organisation," he said in a statement issued today. Narasimha had earlier this month told The Telegraph that he was concerned that the Antrix-Devas affair would hurt morale within Isro.

The government had cited "national interest" in cancelling the deal between Antrix, Isro's commercial arm, and Devas. The two probes had both found the deal had been loaded in favour of Devas and exposed the government to unwarranted financial risks.

Antrix had committed about Rs 800 crore on two satellites and pledged almost all the capacity over a certain spectrum on the satellites to Devas.

The probe into the Antrix-Devas deal by former cabinet secretary B.K. Chaturvedi and Narasimha had found no evidence of any "short-changing" on the spectrum, Narasimha said today, but had recommended reforms to ensure certain identified lapses would not recur in the future.

"It has seemed most appropriate to me that the proposed reforms... are carried out best by a commission of which I am no longer a member," Narasimha wrote.

This is the second reason for my request, he said, adding that the Prime Minister has not yet accepted his request.

A former space official, who had no role in the deal, has said he is puzzled by the conclusions of the second probe that was led by the former chief vigilance commissioner P. Sinha with current Isro chairperson K. Radhakrishnan, among others, as a member.

The language in the conclusions, made public by the government, suggests that the former space officials may have taken decisions to favour Devas for personal gains, the official said. "There is innuendo, assumed mal-intent without any evidence," he said.