Completing the process in January and February means that, by the time Parliament meets again for the Budget Session, all it will be in a position to do is debate retrospective reviews.

Erasing the touchstone

The touchstone against which the provisions of the US Act are to be judged is the set of assurances that the prime minister gave to Parliament in his elaborate and detailed statement on August 17, 2006. When I pointed out to Americans who had taken the trouble to come to educate me on the merits of the deal that there was just no way in which what Manmohan Singh had assured Parliament could be reconciled with the provisions of the Act, I was told, “But that is his problem. Not ours.”

That this is a real problem is evident from the way the August 17 assurances are being sought to be replaced by invoking once again the earlier statements. Recall what the External Affairs Minister told Parliament on December 12, 2006, in this regard: “I would like to inform the House that the US Administration has categorically assured us that this legislation enables the United States to fulfill all of the commitments made to India in the July 18 and March 2 Joint Statements and this legislation explicitly authorises civil nuclear cooperation with India in a manner fully consistent with those two statements. We fully expect the July 18 Statement and the March 2 Separation Plan to be reflected in the text of the 123 Agreement.”

... contd.