Former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientist Nambi Narayanan claimed previous governments didn’t allocate enough funds to the space agency in its nascent days as the government had “no faith” in ISRO.

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While speaking about the formative years of ISRO to news agency ANI, Narayanan said, “During the previous government, when we started in 1962-63, we were only 20-23 people. When the first rocket was launched. It was on a borrowed rocket. Only three buildings were there back then.”

On ISRO-ACP collaboration, the former scientist however, said that it should not be looked at it “politically” but it was only for lack of money. “If we have the required funding, why should we go for that collaboration? The collaboration itself started because for want of money. Many people do not know, they somehow look at it politically. But the hard truth is that we didn’t have the money. But I don’t blame any government,” he said.

He further said that his project on Liquid Propulsion System suffered because of the lack of money but do not want to blame any government. “They did not have faith in ISRO at that timeframe,” he said.

“The reason may be that it is not your priority, you have not understood what is our priority, you could have thought that this was not required, you did not have faith,” he added.

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Meanwhile, the ruling BJP took a dig at Congress on Narayanan’s claims saying that the grand old party can’t discredit the PM just because they don’t like him.

“Ace ISRO scientist says he is shocked at the Opposition on asking why PM Modi went to ISRO and got respect. 1. Everywhere ISRO Chairman Shri S. Somanath got due respect. 2. Just because you don’t like PM, you can’t discredit him. Who else is supposed to be credited with a national project? Just because the Opposition doesn’t like him, they can’t remove him from his post,” the BJP said on X.

After Chandrayaan-3’s successful lunar landing on August 23, the opposition Congress criticised PM Modi for “hogging the limelight” in reference to his address just after the landing.

“You were quick to come on screen and take credit after the landing, but why has your government failed so terribly in supporting the scientists and the ISRO?,” Congress leader KC Venugopal said in a post on X.

(With inputs from ANI)