NEW DELHI:
Isro's satellite Gsat-6A, whose communication link with the ground station got snapped, came to the limelight first when the
Antrix-Devas deal came under the scanner in 2011.
Gsat-6A was in the news when Antrix,
Isro's commercial arm, struck a deal with Bengaluru-based Devas Multimedia Private Ltd in 2005 to provide 70 MHz of scarce S-Band wavelength for the latter's digital multimedia services. This was to be done by leasing 90% of the transponders in GSAT-6A and its predecessor GSAT-6, launched in August 2015. Devas, in turn, was to pay
Antrix $300 million (around 1,900 crore) over 12 years.
G Madhavan Nair was the then Isro chairman. However, when financial irregularities in the deal came to the fore in 2011, the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government cancelled the agreement. Nair and other Isro officials were charged by the CBI for causing a loss of Rs 578 crore to the exchequer.
India and Isro received another setback when Devas took Antrix and the government to the international court for cancelling its contract and claimed $1.6 billion in damages. The case went on for a long time. Later, the CBI booked Devas and its directors and the ED started a probe against the company under Fema and PMLA.
This is a second setback in two years for Isro. Before the Gsat-6A mission failure, Isro received a jolt on August 31 last year when its navigation satellite IRNSS-1H, costing around Rs 150 crore, got stuck in the heat shield soon after its launch. The navsat stuck in the heat shield, now declared space debris, is still roaming in the near-earth orbit and will ultimately fall on earth.
