Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday, 18 January, called the 2005 deal between Antrix and Devas a fraud on the people of India and a fraud against the country, lashing out at the Congress.
Antrix Corporation is the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal order, passed in September 2021, directing for winding up of Devas Multimedia.
Lauding the Supreme Court for delivering "a very comprehensive order on Antrix-Devas case", Sitharaman on Tuesday noted at a press conference that it had taken the Congress-led UPA government six years to cancel the deal in 2011.
The Supreme Court order shows how the UPA government indulged in wrong practices, Sitharaman further stated.
"Antrix-Devas deal was against national security. It should be Congress party's turn to tell how this kind of fraud was perpetrated on people of India," she added.
The finance minister accused the Congress-led UPA of misusing power to give away S-Band spectrum, which is only used largely for defence purposes, for the 2005 deal.
"This kind of selling of primary endowments like wavelengths, satellites or spectrum band, giving it away to private parties and making a deal out if it marks the feature of the Congress governments," she said.
Sitharaman called it a brazen agreement, adding that the SC order showed that the Congress are "master game players in this". Saying that the cabinet was also kept in the dark about this deal, she said that the Congress should answer how and why this was done.
"They (Congress) should have no moral right to speak about crony capitalism," Sitharaman said.
"It's a fraud of the Congress, for the Congress and by the Congress," the finance minister stressed.
FM Sitharaman further went on to add that the government is now fighting to save the taxpayers' money which otherwise would have gone to pay for the "scandalous" Antrix-Devas deal.
"The government is fighting in every court so that Devas does not get away with the Antrix deal fraud," she added.
What Has Happened So Far?
In 2011, Antrix had cancelled its 2005 contract to lease space segment capacity on two satellites. In 2015, Devas won arbitration proceedings before the International Chamber of Commerce, which resulted in an award of $1.3 billion against Antrix, reported IANS.
The Supreme Court on Monday said if the seeds of the commercial relationship between the Antrix Corporation and Devas Multimedia, were a product of fraud perpetrated by latter, "then the plant which grew out of those seeds was infected with poison of fraud", as it upheld the NCLT order, directing the firm's winding up.
In May 2021, the Bengaluru bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) ordered the winding up of Devas, at the insistence of Antrix. It also appointed a provisional liquidator, saying Devas was incorporated with a fraudulent motive to collude with the then officials of Antrix Corporation, to get bandwidth from it by entering into an agreement in 2005.
In September last year, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal upheld the NCLT's order, reports IANS.
(With inputs from IANS.)
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