Manmohan Singh said the bill will be introduced in Parliament and it could be referred to the Standing Committee where "divergent opinions" can be addressed.
Ahead of his meeting with US president Barack Obama next month, prime minister Manmohan Singh reached out to the opposition on Wednesday saying his government had an open mind on the nuclear liability bill and was ready to discuss deficiencies in the draft.
Parliament has to pass the liability law to enable US companies to do nuclear business in India. American companies, eager to get a share of the multi-billion dollar nuclear pie, are getting frustrated over New Delhi’s inability to quickly enact the legislation and allow them entry to the lucrative Indian market. The liability bill and the reprocessing agreement, which was signed earlier this month, will finally make the complex India-US civil nuclear agreement operational. But the reprocessing agreement will also have to be passed by the US Congress.
Washington has been pushing the government to do its bit. The Union government, which had proposed to table the bill in parliament earlier during the session, held it back realising belatedly that the opposition parties, including the Left and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), would reject it outright.
“It should go to the parliamentary standing committee where all divergent opinions can be resolved,” Singh told reporters. The government has also clarified that the Rs500-crore ceiling on liability could be raised, since it is just the amount specified to enable an operator to get insurance cover which cannot be taken if no amount is mentioned.
Sources said the bill provides for ‘no fault liability’ that will make it mandatory for the operator to pay immediate relief to the victims.
The Rs500 crore mentioned in the draft bill would be the amount available to pay immediate compensation and was not the final amount which could be worked out according to the level of devastation caused in case of an accident. A clear procedure is also laid down on how to get the compensation. This has been done against the backdrop of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy where victims are still waiting to get compensation. The bill also has provisions that would enable the government to either increase or decrease the amount of liability of any operator. Seeking to allay apprehensions, the source said, the bill does not take away any rights provided under law and needed to be looked at as an additionality. It also does not dilute criminal liability of the operator.
Another criticism of the draft bill was that the suppliers were kept completely out of the loop. Sources have now clarified that in case of manufacturing defects in the plant plans and other such issues, the suppliers would also be held liable and could be sued and brought to book.
Activists like Praful Bidwai do not want a ceiling fixed on the operator saying countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden had left this open-ended.
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