The Samajwadi Party (SP) today threw its weight behind the government over latest disclosures from the US on the nuclear deal and downplayed its chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s remarks about the party being in a “dilemma” over the issue.
The disclosure related to a letter by the US State Department to a member of US Congress that the US would stop fuel supplies and other nuclear cooperation with India if it conducted a nuclear test.
“We will go by the statement made by the prime minister on the issue,” SP General Secretary Amar Singh told reporters here.
When asked about the controversy over the nuclear deal, Singh, whose party switched sides in July to support the government after the Left pulled out support, said, “We’ll take a call when a crisis will be faced by the nation... I am not seeing any problem.”
To a query on the demand of the BJP and the Left parties for an early session of Parliament to discuss the issue, Singh said, “The Opposition is protesting just for the sake of it”.
Singh suggested that his party was a more reliable partner than the Left parties as it did not give “daily ultimatums”.
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Singh also said that after the next Lok Sabha elections, the SP party would back the Congress-led UPA and “support whosoever is made prime minister by Sonia Gandhi”.
The statement is significant as Singh has been saying that Manmohan Singh should be projected as the UPA’s prime ministerial candidate.
On Mulayam Singh’s remarks, he suggested that the SP chief had only stated that after the revelation of the letter, various facts needed to be checked.
Commenting on the controversy over the clause that the US would end all nuclear cooperation with India if it carried out a nuclear test, Singh said according to former president APJ Abdul Kalam, India did not need to conduct any fresh test.