Will table the Bill in the Lok Sabha tomorrow.
The United Progressive Alliance government today said it was ready to accept “reasonable amendments” to the controversial Clause 17(b) related to the liability of suppliers in the nuclear liability Bill. The government has so far proposed three options before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main Opposition party in Parliament, with the rider that there can be further changes in any of these three formulations.
The BJP, seeking a harder formulation to nail the suppliers, has given four choices of amendments to the government.
A confident Minister of State for Science and technology Prithviraj Chavan today said that the government would table the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill for passage in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
Top government officials also admitted that not just Russia but almost all prospective partners in civil nuclear supplies have strong reservations about any liability on suppliers. The government, nevertheless, will not delete the Clause 17(b). It wants to be cautious as “India is the only country that had suffered a Bhopal gas tragedy.”
Chavan held a series of meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, BJP leaders Arun Jaitley, S S Ahluwalia and some leaders of the Left parties. Later he said the Cabinet had cleared an improved formulation of the clause 17(b). It reads that the operator, after paying compensation to victims, shall have a right to recourse where “the incident has resulted as a consequence of an act of supplier or his employees, done with the intent to cause nuclear damage, and such act includes supply of equipment or material with patent or latent defects or sub-standard services”.
The Opposition can agree into retaining the Clause 17(b) of the original draft or it can agree to the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s formulation, said Chavan.
“If the Opposition wants to change the formulation of any of these three, even then we are ready for a discussion,” Chavan added.
The Prime Minister has directed Chavan to try to build a larger consensus since it is an important issue. The series of meetings between the government and Opposition parties will continue even tomorrow while the BJP threatened that it would not support the Bill if “any attempt was made to absolve the obligation of suppliers.”
“We would like to ask this government and the Prime Minister why they are trying to mislead the people of this country. We would also want to question the intention of the government because it is trying to completely absolve suppliers from any obligation. The original draft of the Standing Committee was the best in our view and if the government doesn’t relent, it would be difficult for the BJP to support the Bill in its present form,” said BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
The BJP has alleged that the government had brought an amendment to Clause 17 of the Bill that would allow a foreign supplier be sued for supplying defective equipment in case of nuclear accident if the supply was made with the ‘intent’ of causing a nuclear accident.
“The BJP has major problems with the word intent that is being used in the amendment and it is unacceptable to the party,” added Rudy.
He also said that the issue of surrounding the use of word “intent” was discussed at length and it was rejected by the members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology but the government has again used the word in the new amendment.
The BJP spokesperson also alleged that the government had provided unsigned documents to the standing committee which had proposed five amendments, including that of clause 17. “When the secretary of the Atomic Energy was questioned about the unsigned document, he had apologized to the standing committee members. We thought the issue was discussed and it was over but it is very shocking to see that the government has again brought in the same amendments,” he said.
