The government is clear that what the deal sought was to get the rights of a Nuclear Weapons State without joining the Non Proliferation Treaty. The key concern was to get these rights without any conditions or commitments outside the July 18 understanding. The House and Senate versions of the Bill had conditions that made India uncomfortable, a point explicitly addressed in PM’s August 17 speech.

However, the final Bill takes many of these riders into the non-binding sections making the waiver unconditional. India needed waiver from laws that did not allow US to enter into such an agreement with a country that has detonated a nuclear device after 1978, maintains an active nuclear weapons programme and does not allow all its reactors under permanent IAEA safeguards. The Bill gives these waiver and attaches no fresh conditions.