Elon Musk asked why Starlink still cannot start commercial service in India after five years of compliance, and whether Mukesh Ambani is “the real boss.” Rahul Gandhi replied: “Wait till you discover the other guy.”
BY PC Bureau
New Delhi, October 8: Elon Musk asked on Thursday whether Mukesh Ambani is “the real boss of India,” and Rahul Gandhi answered by pointing him to someone else.
Musk wrote that Starlink is licensed in more than 165 countries and has spent five years meeting Indian requirements, “so why still no license?” He followed with the question: “Is Ambani the real boss of India?” A day earlier he had accused unnamed “oligarchs” of blocking the service to protect a “monopolistic chokehold,” saying, “You can guess who they are.”
The Leader of the Opposition quoted the post and replied: “Welcome to India, Elon. Wait till you discover the other guy.” He did not name that person. The line matches his habit of pairing Ambani with Gautam Adani in campaign attacks. Adani is not among the companies licensed for satellite communications.
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The Ministry of Communications rejected the charge the same day. It called the framework “fair and non-discriminatory” and the bias claim “baseless and misconceived.” Security checks, it said, are under way for all three GMPCS licensees — Starlink, Reliance’s Jio Satellite Communications and Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb — and all three are at “broadly the same regulatory stage.” Spectrum follows only after security clearance.
Starlink holds a GMPCS licence from June 2025 and IN-SPACe authorisation from July 2025, and has built ground gateways. Still pending are the security assessment, FDI approval and commercial spectrum assignment. A proposed 5 per cent spectrum charge was awaiting Cabinet approval. The government has given no date for the remaining clearances.
Welcome to India, Elon.
Wait till you discover the other guy.
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 8, 2026
The delay is not new. Starlink has sought an Indian entry since late 2022. Earlier objections from security agencies centred on control of a foreign constellation, including whether traffic could bypass Indian gateways and how the company would respond if a foreign government made competing demands in a crisis. At India Mobile Congress this week, a SpaceX executive said the company had already built about 20 gateway sites and shaped its India operations around local data rules. Those steps do not replace the remaining sign-offs.
In the satellite queue, the firms with a direct stake beside Starlink are Jio Satellite, part of Ambani’s Reliance group, and Eutelsat OneWeb, backed by Sunil Mittal’s Bharti. Reporting on Musk’s “oligarchs” line has pointed to those two telecom houses, not to Adani. Jio is also building its own low-earth-orbit plans, so the commercial overlap with Starlink is real even if the government says the paperwork is moving in parallel.
Gandhi’s reply pulls the dispute back onto a political track he has used for years: that policy under the Modi government favours a small set of conglomerates, with Adani and Ambani named together. The BJP has treated that charge as unproven campaign rhetoric. Thursday’s post adds no document, contract or regulatory finding. It leaves Musk’s question about Ambani unanswered in fact, and the identity of “the other guy” as an allusion rather than an allegation on the record.
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