Narendra Modi address : India now a ‘space superpower’

Prime Minister Modi held an unexpected address to the nation on Wednesday. In the announcement, which critics cite as a ‘poll tactic’, Modi claimed India now India is in a space ‘super league’, after successfully testing ‘ASAT’ or Anti-satellite missile capable of shooting down space satellites made indigenously by nation’s ambitious space organization ISRO.

There are certain concerns about how the debris from such tests won’t harm the environment or any civilian or military infrastructures around the world. India says it had carried out test in the lower atmosphere so that debris will decay and after few days would fall back harmlessly on earth.

Modi had earlier posted a tweet about his address, without telling what it will be about, fueling rife speculations in Indian media as well as social media channels ranging from big policy change on Pakistan post-Balkot to arrest of popular Indian fugitive, Dawood Ibrahim, hiding in Pakistan’s Karachi a claim which Islamabad vehemently denies.

India, after successful testing, has become the fourth nation to do so just behind US, Russia and China. The tests, experts say, maybe specifically timed weeks after a daring escalation of tensions between both nuclear-powered neighbors India and Pakistan and also after a veto-vote by China at UN, barring nations from international ban on designated terrorist Masood Azhar who claimed responsibility for militant attack on Indian paramilitary forces in disputed kashmir region, followed by weeks of heightened tensions and dog-fights between the two.

India’s primary opposition Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, mocked Modi wishing him “happy world theater day”.

Senior Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta, in a tweet proclaimed that India possessing such power was not a unknown fact and called the timing of it as “odd”.

Several opposition leaders jumped into question government and also threatened to go to nation’s poll-monitoring body, the Election Commission of India.