Nine ISRO staff bodies ask V. Narayanan to put the privatisation plan in writing

Nine employee associations at the Indian Space Research Organisation wrote to chairman V. Narayanan on 4 September, hours after GSLV-F17 placed EOS-05 in orbit. They asked him, in his second hat as Secretary of the Department of Space, to issue a written clarification on reports that manufacturing and launch operations will move to private firms and public sector units.

The five-page letter quotes Pawan Goenka, who heads the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre. At an India Today event he said that eventually ISRO will not manufacture launch vehicles, that private companies or PSUs will do that work, and that the agency will stop building routine satellites and keep only special-purpose, scientific and technology-demonstration craft whose designs can later be handed over.

The associations say those remarks received wide publicity and no matching note from the Department of Space. They want the approved policy, its legal basis, its phasing, and its effect on serving staff and on future public recruitment, in writing. Signatories come from the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, U.R. Rao Satellite Centre, Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, Space Applications Centre, National Remote Sensing Centre and ISRO Propulsion Complex. Together they speak for about 5,000 people, roughly 27 percent of ISRO's stated strength of 18,100.

The letter lists live transfers. SSLV technology and production rights have already gone to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. The same model is said to be planned for PSLV and LVM3. The associations warn that public sector units may be left out of the next round. They also flag the new port at Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu, which is being opened to private launch operators.

"Private participation in defined commercial activities can coexist with a strong, publicly owned ISRO," the letter says. "What cannot be accepted without debate is a policy that reduces ISRO to a residual R&D boutique while the realisation of the nation's launch vehicles and the operation of its launch infrastructure pass out of public hands." They call launch-vehicle design, integration, testing and launch operations the core competence of the organisation, not a manufacturing contract.

An office-bearer at VSSC told ThePrint that if private firms take over vehicle design and production, as much as half the workforce could be left without the work they were hired to do. The letter itself puts the risk in administrative language: staff may be marked surplus or redeployed while contractors perform the same tasks with publicly developed technology. Regular recruitment to Group A, B and C posts, already slowed by vacancies, would fall further.

Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh used the letter on Sunday to accuse the government of shrinking ISRO's role and moving capabilities built over decades into private hands. The associations, speaking separately, said they are not against private entry. They want the boundary written down.

Narayanan has not issued a public reply. Goenka's comments match the direction New Delhi has described since 2020, when the sector was opened and In-SPACe was created. ISRO has already transferred about 120 technologies, including SSLV and PSLV lines. The missing piece is a staffing plan that tells a propulsion engineer at Mahendragiri what the next decade of work looks like.

Until that note exists, the 4 September letter is the workforce's record that they heard the policy from a stage and not from their own department.