Former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair claimed on Thursday that the UPA II government delayed Chandrayaan-2 for Mars mission owing to political considerations

Now, former DRDO scientist Ravi Kumar Gupta has made a similar sensational claim about the UPA government with regards to Mission Shakti.

After former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair claimed that the UPA-2 government delayed Chandrayaan-2 for Mars mission owing to political considerations, former DRDO scientist Ravi Kumar Gupta has made a sensational claim about the same government about Mission Shakti.

Gupta has said that India was capable of launching Mission Shakti in 2012 but the then UPA government didn't give them the nod to do the testing.

"When we had successfully tested ballistic missile defence. The technology needed for destroying the ballistic missile defence is needed to destroy satellites in space. Dr VK Saraswat who was the DRDO chief in 2012 had told the media that we can make an anti-missile satellite. He said that we have the technology needed for it but we did not have the government sanction. We continued with the studies and simulations. I believe we could have done the Mission Shakti in 2012. There is no doubt that whatever we have achieved in 2019 we could have done in 2012 and our stature in the world would have been improved then," he said.