On the social media platform X, Elon Musk intensified his public disagreement with Reliance Industries over Starlink's proposed entry into the Indian market by addressing Mukesh Ambani with the title "Prime Minister Ambani," then posting two media reports documenting political donations to the BJP made by firms linked to the Reliance group, as part of a broader effort to challenge what Musk had characterised as corporate obstruction of Starlink's path into India.
A previous post attributed to Musk put forward the view that Ambani was acting to shield a monopoly position, and posed the question of whether the satellite internet service might be permitted to operate within the country. On X, Musk posted a query about whether Ambani held the true position of authority in India, then followed that with a separate post addressed to Ambani as "Prime Minister," offering what he described as an apology for not recognising that status.
Musk contended that connectivity gaps across India — a pattern he noted in numerous other nations — leave children cut off from educational resources and confine small businesses to neighbourhood markets rather than opening them to international commerce, with Starlink's arrival in those markets potentially narrowing those divides. Separately, he had directed a question at an unnamed official, querying whether regulatory preference for an established dominant provider would nonetheless leave room for Starlink to operate as an alternative competitor.
In a separate post, Musk stated that Starlink had demonstrated its value in disaster relief scenarios globally, stepping in when other communication infrastructure had gone offline, and that the network was positioned to extend similar connectivity benefits to people across India.
The social media posts appeared within hours of Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia's statement that India's regulatory framework bars monopolistic control across all sectors, and that three companies had each been granted satellite communications licences — with operations contingent on each one individually satisfying the prescribed security conditions and operational benchmarks.
Speaking at the India Mobile Congress briefing, Scindia maintained that no sector within the country operates under monopoly conditions, and moved to address the matter directly. The Department of Telecommunications stated that its approach to technology remains neutral, with no preference for any particular platform or system. The stated aim was to make the full range of available services accessible to each and every customer.
Scindia's position, as expressed in the statement, held that consumers operating within a free market bear the right to decide both which service they wish to use and, within that service offering, which provider they opt for. Three entities — Musk's Starlink, Reliance Jio's satellite arm Jio Satcom, and Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb — had already obtained the requisite licences, Scindia noted, while Amazon's Kuiper had indicated interest and would be required to follow the standard regulatory process. The minister added that the position of the authorities on the matter was unambiguous and that the broader public discussion had tended to focus on a single company despite three having already cleared the approval process.
The minister noted that licences had been granted to three parties, with spectrum allocation to follow once the government settles on a revenue-based charging structure, and individual operations permitted to commence upon each party satisfying the relevant security requirements. A final determination on how satcom spectrum will be priced is drawing closer, with both TRAI and the telecom department working toward that outcome, according to Scindia.
Responding to the social media exchange between Rahul Gandhi and Musk on X, Scindia pointed to what he described as a contradiction in the Congress party's position — that the party had at one point raised objections to a particular company receiving a licence, yet later raised objections to that same company not receiving one — and questioned whether the party held a consistent direction, attributing such apparent inconsistency to what he characterised as a pattern typical of Congress.
Musk put forward the claim that certain business figures with dominant market positions in India were working to prevent Starlink from gaining access to the country. Telecom officials in India disputed the notion that domestic commercial considerations were blocking Starlink's route to regulatory approval, while Musk used posts on X to argue that the company's licensing footprint across more than 165 countries and nearly five years of engagement with Indian compliance requirements raised legitimate questions about the delay. The ministry addressed that position by affirming that its rules governing telecom and satellite services apply uniformly across all applicants, with no basis for any suggestion that enforcement had been applied selectively.
