Former ISRO chief Nair barred from govt job, points finger at incumbent

New Delhi/Bangalore, Jan 25 (PTI) Former Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G Madhavan Nair and three other eminent space scientists of the country have been barred from holding any government job in an unprecedented disciplinary action by the Indian government for their role in the controversial Antrix-Devas deal. An angry Nair blamed his successor and the current ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan today for the action, accusing him of being behind the move and pursuing a "personal agenda" by misleading the government. "This is his (Radhakrishnan's) personal agenda. That individual is bent upon hitting so many people and in that process, he is killing the organisation," Nair told PTI in Bangalore. The government action came as an apparent fallout of the Antrix deal in which a private company, Devas, was allotted scarce S band spectrum by ISRO allegedly in violation of rules. Besides Nair, K Bhaskaranarayana, former scientific secretary at ISRO, K R Sridharamurthi, former managing director of Antrix, the commercial arm of ISRO, and K N Shankara, former director of the ISRO satellite centre, have been penalised by the Department of Space, an ISRO official said today. The contract with Devas was signed during the tenure of Nair as ISRO Chairman. Nair was also the architect of India's maiden unmanned moon mission Chandrayan I. The government action came after considering a report of the high-powered committee (HPC) that went into the Devas deal and that of another panel which examined the report. The Prime Minister had on May 31, last year constituted a five-member high-level team under the chairmanship of former Central Vigilance Commissioner Pratyush Sinha to examine various aspects of the agreement between Antrix and Devas. "He (Radhakrishnan) has misled the Government on the whole issue (the Devas deal). He is the key person who worked behind this; he misled and miscommunicated to the Government and he has taken action", Nair said. PTI