Elon Musk escalates India Starlink row by highlighting billionaire’s donations to Modi’s party

Elon Musk escalated his public dispute with Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani by sharing news reports about his donations to prime minister Narendra Modi’s party, furthering a row that started with the American tech mogul lashing out at “oligarchs” for blocking his satellite internet service in the South Asian nation.

In an X post on Saturday, Mr Musk highlighted two reports linking Mr Ambani’s Reliance conglomerate to donations received by Mr Modi’s BJP.

One was a 2022 Al Jazeera investigation titled “How a Reliance-funded firm boosts BJP‘s campaigns on Facebook“, and the other a 2024 Indian Express report that Qwik Supply, a company linked to Reliance, had donated £30m to the BJP and £2m to one of its regional allies, Shiv Senathrough electoral bonds, which allowed individuals and companies to fund political parties anonymously by buying bonds from the State Bank of India.

The Supreme Court struck the funding system down as unconstitutional in 2024, following which the election commission published data about who bought and cashed the bonds.

That data showed Qwik Supply bought £32m of bonds between 2021-22 and 2023-24, making it the third-largest buyer.

A spokesperson for Mr Ambani’s conglomerate told the PTI news agency in March 2024 that Qwik Supply “wasn’t a subsidiary of any Reliance entity”. However, according to Reuters, company filings showed three Reliance firms together held a 50.04 per cent stake in Qwik Supply.

The Al Jazeera news report cited by Mr Musk said a news start-up funded by Reliance had run political advertisements promoting the BJP on Facebook and Instagram.

Reliance was still to publicly respond to Mr Musk’s latest posts.

The posts followed a week of escalating remarks by Mr Musk about his company SpaceX’s wait for approval to deploy its Starlink satellite broadband in India.

On Wednesday, he declared on X, which he also owns, that Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people”.

“You can guess who they are,” he added. He was widely understood in India to refer to Mr Ambani and fellow billionaire Sunil Mittal. Mr Ambani’s Jio and Mr Mittal’s Airtel control nearly 80 per cent of the broadband market in India in what’s a virtual duopoly.

On Thursday, Mr Musk took it up a notch by naming Mr Ambani.

“Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and requirement of the government of India, so why still no license?” he said on X. “Is Ambani the real boss of India?”

To this, Rahul Gandhithe leader of opposition, replied: “Welcome to India, Elon. Wait till you discover the other guy.”

He was understood to mean Gautam Adani, another billionaire seen as being close to Mr Modi and his Hindu nationalist party.

Mr Musk answered: “Thank you, Rahul. This is indeed troubling.”

In a later post, Mr Musk addressed Mr Ambani directly once again, calling him “prime minister” in an apparent jibe at Mr Modi.

“Dear Prime Minister Ambani,” he wrote, “Please accept my humble apologies for not realising that you are the real boss of India.”

India’s communications ministry rejected Mr Musk’s claims in a statement on Thursday, insisting the suggestion that its approval framework or its application was unfair or discriminatory was “baseless and misconceived”.

The statement did not name Mr Musk or Starlink.

Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, a junior communications minister, said on the sidelines of the India Mobile Congress, a telecom conference in Delhithat the delay “has nothing to do with one company”.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, the communications minister, told a briefing at the conference on Friday that India did not permit monopolies in any sector and that the telecom department was “technology agnostic”.

He said three companies had secured licences for satellite communication services in India – Starlink, Reliance’s Jio Satcom, and Airtel-backed Eutelsat OneWeb – but they were all still to satisfy security requirements and other conditions before they could start operating.

Starlink received the licence in June 2025, officials said, but the company still needed to obtain security clearances before it could begin commercial services. Mr Musk had previously clashed with Mr Ambani over how India should allocate satellite spectrum.

Akash Ambani, Mr Ambani’s son and managing director of Jio Platforms, Reliance’s telecoms business, declined to comment on Mr Musk’s remarks when asked about them at the India Mobile Congress, PTI reported.