The Congress on Thursday directly accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of orchestrating the back-to-back deals between Elon Musk’s Starlink and two of India’s leading telecom platforms, Airtel and Jio, to curry favour with US President Donald Trump.
The alacrity with which the two telecom companies — previously opposed to Starlink’s Internet service in India — signed up with the international telecommunications provider in just 24 hours has surprised many. Airtel announced its tie-up on Tuesday and Jio on Wednesday.
Congress communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh said: “Within literally 12 hours, both Airtel and Jio have announced partnerships with Starlink, seemingly overcoming all their objections to its entry into India — which they have been voicing for quite some time. It is abundantly clear that these partnerships have been orchestrated by none other than the PM himself to buy goodwill with President Trump through Starlink owner Elon Musk.”
Never has a private individual influenced so much power in the American administration as Musk has under Trump.
The Congress and the CPM have raised several questions on the deals, most importantly on national security. “Who will have the power to switch connectivity on or off when national security demands it? Will it be Starlink or its Indian partners? Will other satellite-based connectivity providers also be permitted and on what basis?” Ramesh asked.
The CPM politburo said US threats to stop Starlink services to the Ukraine military forced President Volodymyr Zelensky to concede US demands on handing over its natural resources and negotiating with Russia under American aegis. “Allowing a US company to acquire highly strategic satellite spectrum and orbital slots and create a space monopoly compromises our national sovereignty and security.”
The CPM flagged questions on spectrum allocation, referring to the Supreme Court order in the 2G case that spectrum is a scarce resource and can be allocated to private players only through open and transparent auction. “Any private deal for allocating spectrum would be a violation of the law of the land. Jio, Airtel and Starlink coming together to form a cartel to dominate satellite spectrum use will be at the cost of millions of telecom subscribers in India,” the CPM noted.
According to the party, satellite spectrum should be allocated exclusively for strategic uses, such as defence and Isro operations. “This is not only a question of spectrum allocation but also the number of orbital slots a country has. Allowing such satellites to capture vital orbital slots but also use them for mapping our natural resources, gathering commercially valuable data, e.g., weather, the status of crops, and, of course, strategic military/defence data, would be against our national and security interests. Particularly as Isro and other Indian agencies have the ability to do so.”
