Goof-up by Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw: Welcomes Elon Musk’s Starlink to India, then deletes post – Why?

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s Starlink blunder: A hasty welcome and a quick deletion

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw caused a major goof-up on Wednesday night around 10 PM when he posted a message on X welcoming Elon Musk’s Starlink to India. However, within minutes, Vaishnaw deleted his post—raising questions about the move.

Vaishnaw’s now-deleted post came just hours after major Indian telecom giants, Sunil Mittal’s Airtel and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, announced their partnerships with SpaceX’s Starlink for equipment sales in India. “Starlink, welcome to India! Will be useful for remote area railway projects,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Railways, Information Technology and Information and Broadcasting.

Elon Musk was lobbying in India to avoid an auction for the Spectrum for Satellites from 2003. The Government of India has passed the new Telecom Act to avoid auction and now declared Administrative Pricing for Satellite Spectrum allotment. Now the Regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is authorized by the government to fix the price.

Elon Musk’s clout in India has reportedly grown following Donald Trump’s election victory. Starlink is facing all types of hurdles in India, started erasing a few days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Trump. Before the Department of Telecom and Security agencies’ clearance, India’s private telecom operators Airtel and Reliance Jio declared partnership with Starlink in selling its equipments in India.

Within hours, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw welcomed Starlink, a move considered hasty by the Railways Minister, who is often referred to as the “Reel Minister” by the Opposition. Vaishnaw is known for being trigger-happy on social media and has been criticized by many for frequently creating Reel videos. Former IAS officer Vaishnaw, blue eyed boy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, landed in Cabinet totally out of blues in 2019.

Vaishnaw was an Odisha Cadre Indian Administrative Officer (IAS) who came to the limelight when he was Collector in Balasore in Odisha. Those days, an unverified story (public relations exercise?) was created in the media about him for informing the entry of whirlwinds by getting knowledge from seeing in the US Navy’s website through the Internet in 1998. There is no confirmation about this story and people doubt the authenticity as that time the Internet was not so easily available in remote areas like Odisha.

Later he landed in Prime Minister’s Office as Director-level officer (middle-ranking post) in Vajpayee’s office and became his Private Secretary in mid 2004, when Vajpayee became the Opposition Leader. After some time, he left IAS and landed in the US for studies, and back in India as head of GE’s Railway Project in 2012. This controversial, corruption scandal-hit project was an electrical engine manufacturing by GE for Indian Railways. Within seven years he became Railway Minister. So, the head of a US Vendor company (GE) dealing with Railways became Railway Minister. Modi from out of the blue made him a Member of Parliament through Rajya Sabha in 2019 and gave him all plum posts in the Cabinet.

Many observe this is how the US air drops people. Same as Shashi Tharoor (then media advisor of UN head Koffi Annan) landed in Indian politics after Food for Oil Scam hit Sonia Gandhi, Electrical Engineer Raghu Ram Rajan who have Diploma in Banking from US landed as India’s Reserve Bank Governor.

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