Did a retired ISRO official clear Devas deal?

New Delhi: It's been six years when the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) commercial arm Antrix signed the dotted line with Devas Multimedia to send up two satellites and lease S-band Spectrum. But new facts that have now emerged about the crucial meeting that cleared the deal are certain to raise some eyebrows.

Sources now tell NDTV that M Sundaram, a member of Finance Department, Space, sat through the meeting that actually cleared the deal. He retired a month before the deal was signed.

Although his replacements had arrived, they weren't allowed to have a say. In fact they were not even allowed in the meetings that discussed it.
Soon after, Mr Sundaram was re-employed at National Institute of Advanced Studies as an advisor.

As the government tries to find out why ISRO didn't inform the Cabinet about giving away the S-band spectrum to Devas and refused the Ministry of Defence access to this key resource, NDTV has documents to show that the top echelons of India's space community were in the know of the deal.

One of India's most decorated scientist and former Chairman of ISRO, Dr Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, was part of the core group that initiated the deal. The documents show Dr Kasturirangan was also present when the deal was cleared in 2003.

All efforts to contact Dr Kasturirangan failed.