New Delhi: How should India respond to the 27 percent reciprocal tariff imposed by the Trump administration? AAP MP Raghav Chadha had a suggestion: the Modi government should withhold approvals required for Starlink, the satellite network developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
These approvals, suggested Chadha, can be used as a “bargaining chip” given Musk’s closeness to US President Donald Trump. SpaceX, the spaceflight company owned of which Musk is founder and CEO, is awaiting regulatory approval in India to offer low-cost satellite broadband services.
On Wednesday, Trump marked ‘Liberation Day’ by setting a baseline tariff of 10 percent on all goods coming into the US. In the case of India, he referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “great friend” but added that India was “not treating the US right” from a tariff point of view.
“India…very, very tough… very, very tough. The Prime Minister just left. He’s a great friend of mine, but I said, ‘you’re a friend of mine, but you’re not treating us right’. They charge us 52 percent. You have to understand, we charge them almost nothing for years and years and decades, and it was only seven years ago, when I came in, that we started with China,” he said.
Within hours of the announcement, the issue found mention in the Rajya Sabha where opposition MPs including Raghav Chadha of the Aam Aadmi Party termed it an assault on the Indian economy.
Chadha raised the issue during question hour and asked why the government shouldn’t “withhold the necessary approvals” for Starlink to then use it as a “bargaining chip” to re-negotiate the reciprocal tariff.
He also asked how the Centre plans to deal with resistance from Starlink on questions pertaining to data sharing and potential misuse.
“Accha sila diya tune mere pyaar ka,
Yaar ne hi loot liya ghar yaar ka.”This song perfectly sums up India–US ties today.
We offered unflinching loyalty, but in return, the Trump Administration has imposed the Trump Tariff that could wreck the Indian economy.
With this… pic.twitter.com/22fpMlutNw
— Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) April 3, 2025
From the Treasury benches, Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia rose to answer. Without commenting on Chadha’s suggestion, he assured members of the Upper House that their “concerns” over Starlink were heard and that the government was doing everything to protect the interests of Indian consumers. “The only two licenses till now that have been given out for satellite technology in India at this point of time happen to be Indian companies: Reliance and Bharti Airtel. We have a very clear window that we have put together which takes care of our consumers, takes care of India’s security concerns, and if you are able to satisfy all those requirements which are the same for every provider of that satellite communication, the doors of India are open to you. The customer will decide which service provider the customer wants to go with,” he said.
Scindia added that besides being the world’s largest telecom market, India is also the cheapest in terms of service costs.
Chadha then posed a supplementary question, citing Musk’s threat to withdraw Starlink services from war-torn Ukraine—to which Scindia said that he cannot answer questions on behalf of a private company.
In another supplementary question, Chadha also raised the issue of the Army seizing what appeared to be a Starlink device in Manipur in December. When questioned about it, Musk’s company refused to cooperate, he alleged. Scindia while responding to Chadha said he was making a ‘direct reference to an indirect context’ to cast aspersions.
Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar remarked that Chadha was “obsessed” with what Trump is doing in the US and asked the AAP MP to ‘Indianise’ his questions. Chadha replied by saying that his obsession is with “whatever will affect India’s interests, particularly its economic interests”.
Minister of State (MoS) for Communications Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani too responded to Chadha’s concerns. “He (Chadha) is worried that Starlink is a competitive threat that we (government) are supporting,” he said.
Adding, “The broadband speed that our terrestrial network is 188 times more than what Starlink or any other satellite network can provide.”
He also clarified that Starlink is competition mainly to fixed broadband service providers and that the number of such users in India is 10 times Starlink’s global user base.
Scindia then intervened and listed safeguards taken by the government to secure the interests of Indian users: service provider has to establish an earth station gateway in India for each satellite network; operation, maintenance, control and monitoring centre of that gateway also has to be in India; originating and terminating traffic for Indian customers shall pass through that gateway; monitoring facility to be made available by the service provider at the gateway; and the service provider shall ensure that any user terminal registered in the gateway of any other country has to be registered with the Indian gateway when operating from Indian territory.”
CPI MP Sandosh Kumar then asked the minister about the two Indian companies that have tied up with Starlink, to which Scindia said that no Indian citizen can access a satellite without licence and approval.
Any tie-up between DSPs and satellite providers, including Starlink, is a market mechanism and the government has no role in it, he said. A satellite, he added, is a complementary technology and a licence to operate in India is granted only once all the boxes are ticked.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) sets the price at which the spectrum is assigned to an operator, he underlined.
Outside the House, Chadha later took a dig at the Modi government in light of the reciprocal tariff. “We used to listen to this song ‘Achha sila diya tune mere pyar ka’… India left no stone unturned in maintaining the friendship. Even the Union finance minister removed a tax called the ‘Google tax’ to protect the interests of American companies. But what did we get in return?… It will have a huge impact on our (Indian) companies…”
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor too added that “we still don’t know the full implications” of the move by the Trump administration. He told reporters, “Certainly, if we are at a 26 percent tariff, then Indian exports will become less competitive. It also depends on who the competition is…We have a bilateral trade deal coming out of the negotiations; then we might be able to moderate some of the elements in the current decision announced on 2 April. In the short term, a 26 percent tariff sounds like bad news…”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Airtel and Jio are welcoming Starlink to India. Is it a bid to get on Trump’s good side?
