As per the report released by the ISRO, a committee of five-members, concluded that former chairman of ISRO, G Madhavan Nair, and three other scientists were responsible for the contract.

Before last week, the government had ordered to rescue G Madhavan Nair, along with three – A Bhaskaranarayana, former scientific secretary at ISRO, KR Sridharamurthi, former executive director of Antrix, the commercial arm of ISRO, and K.N Shankara, former director of the ISRO satellite centre, all of these have since retired.

However they all were alleged with the role in the controversial deal between ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Corporation and Devas Multimedia.

Now ISRO’s committee that was chaired by former central vigilance commissioner (CVC) Pratyush Sinha, has revealed a report and indicted Mr.Nair and other with having serious lapses of judgment along with lack of transparency over the deal.

The committee also said in some cases over the deal, the actions verged on the point of breach of public trust. It cleared that the Antrix-Devas deal is completely against ISRO as having incomplete information with no clearance from the legal cells of the Department of Space and the Finance Ministry.

The Antrix-Devas deal related with selling of 70 MHz S-band spectrum by ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix by leasing out transponders of two satellites to be built mainly for Devas at low prices in 2005. All the deal was proceeding under the contention of Mr. Nair who was then chairman of ISRO.

The deal which was completely in favour of Devas Multimedia that resulted huge loss to ISRO as a loss to the exchequer of Rs 2 lakh crore. The centre later scrapped the controversial deal.

By recommending govt. to take strict actions against Mr Nair and also the three scientists, ISRO committee said to take investigation by an appropriate agency for looking into the changing shareholding pattern of ownership of Devas.

Mr. Nair opposed the report and blamed the committee of revealing selective facts only as misrepresenting the report. He accused his successor at ISRO, K Radhakrishnan to work behind all this deal. He added in his statement that he would take the govt. in court over the controversial deal.
Radhakrishan had announced the two committee reports yesterday that would be made public.

He said, “He (Radhakrishnan) has misled the Government on the whole issue (the controversial Devas deal). He is the key person who worked behind this; he misled and mis-communicated to the Government and he has taken action.”

Talking to Media about the committee report, Mr Nair allegedly claimed ISRO of being selective in revealing facts. He said, “ Whatever bits and pieces are being released shows that they don’t want to reveal the full facts…the portions which are quoted from Pratyush Sinha committee are inaccurate and inconsistent.”