BJP slams government on Devas-ISRO deal

MUMBAI - The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Sunday attacked the Congress-led central government for the deal by the Indian space agency giving S-band spectrum to a private company without competitive bidding.

“I want to ask the prime minister, how do you run the government if you did not know (regarding the deal),” BJP national secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad said here.

The government has denied that the nation suffered revenue losses in the allocation of space spectrum using S-band - high value and scarce radio waves - in the deal between the Indian Space Organisation’s commercial arm Antrix and private company Devas.

“This is a scam and no competitive bidding was held before granting the band to Devas Multimedia in 2005,” Prasad added.

Prasad also took on Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, alleging that the latter did not look in the irregularities of the 2005 agreement while he was a minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“What was the then minister of state in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Prithviraj Chavan, doing for five years when such irregularities were staring in the face of the government?” he said.

Prasad also alleged that the government was ignoring the issue of the black money stashed away in the Swiss banks.

He alleged that the government the misleading the entire nation on the Hasan Ali case and that it is protecting those with unaccounted wealth.

Prasad pointed out that the Supreme Court Thursday asked the central government to tell it where was the country’s top tax evader Hasan Ali, who has allegedly stashed away a huge amount of money in foreign banks.

Prasad, who is in the city to attend ‘Uttar Bharatiya Sammelan’ (north Indians’ conference) also released the correspondence between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former telecom minister A. Raja regarding 2G spectrum allocation.