BANGALORE: Denying that he was speaking on behalf of Devas Multimedia Limited, former ISRO chairman N Madhavan Nair said the agreement between the organisation and Antrix, the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), would have brought a great deal of technology to the country.
“This would have become a national asset,” which he said was immeasurable in monetary terms.
He said that the allegation of allotting defence spectrum to Devas was baseless since even today three slots of spectrum of up to 240 MHz are not being used completely. “Not even one per cent of this has been used.” Nair added that there were many deals of ISRO which involved sale of more transponders.
“Only the United States and Japan have this technology, which was not to be shared with India due to an embargo,” he explained, while adding that Devas took the risk of consenting to bring it to the country.
He cited the Chaturvedi Committee findings, which had stated that the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to ISRO was 13.8 per cent, which, according to him, was a good figure in such deals.
Devas Office in Limbo
A year after the controversial Antrix-Devas S-band spectrum allocation deal was scrapped by the Centre, the Devas headquarters in Jayanagar — its only in India — is in a state of limbo.
Company sources told Express that the office was not functioning at its optimal strength and potential. “The company is in limbo,” they said. Company CEO Ramachandran was unavailable for comment as he is in the United States.
Last February, when the deal was being reviewed by the Centre, the office remained shut for several days. It was left to the security guard to reply to queries about office and its staff. He had stated that the company had been shut from February 16-18, 2011, but on a few days only a handful turned up for work.
Denying any slump in functioning, officials had then stated that there were no directive to close their offices.