Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey, who chairs a parliamentary committee, has hit back at Elon Musk over Starlink, saying India does not change its security policy under “pressure” after the billionaire accused Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani of running a monopoly that shuts out the satellite internet provider.
“India is a healthy democratic, sovereign nation; it does not change its security policy under pressure or social media,” Dubey said on X in response to Musk’s remarks attacking Ambani and questioning India’s resistance to Starlink’s entry. Dubey said his panel studied the risks the company poses. “As the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee, our committee has understood the challenges facing the country’s security agencies through Starlink,” he said, adding that the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Home Affairs and investigation agencies were being affected by what he called “dangerous games”.
India’s approval process has moved in stages. Commercial service, however, depends on spectrum assignment and the conditions attached to it, which remain contested. Musk’s remarks, which prompted Dubey’s response, began with an attack on Ambani’s supporters. He argued that consumers stood to gain. Musk then turned sarcastic. Dubey rejected that framing and pointed to the previous government. He did not specify what had been communicated or which risks had been flagged.
Starlink secured a satellite communication licence from the Department of Telecommunications and an authorisation from the space regulator IN-SPACe in 2025, according to public reports.
“The ridiculous arguments by Ambani’s army of Internet shills make no sense,” he said, accusing them of contradicting themselves over how strong a competitor Starlink really is. “On the one hand, they say Starlink couldn’t possibly compete with the amazing low prices offered by Ambani’s de facto monopoly in India and then, in the same breath, they essentially claim that Starlink would be too strong of a competitor,” Musk said, calling the position “absurd hypocrisy and hyperbole. “The reality is that competition would greatly benefit the average citizen in India by giving them more choices, as it always does,” Musk said. He added that Ambani’s profits would be lower but that the Reliance chairman “is not going out of business”. “Dear Prime Minister Ambani, Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” he said, before asking whether Ambani would “nonetheless consider allowing Starlink to compete”. “In 2013-14, the government of Shri Manmohan Singh ji had informed TRAI about these threats,” he said, referring to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
