Winter has only announced its impending arrival in the Capital but the Congress thinking on the fate of the Indo-US nuclear deal, both within and outside government, is already in a thick fog. Faced with duplicitous allies, who cleared the deal in the joint CCPA-CCS meeting last July and then junked it at the first possibility of an early general election, and with the Left having no qualms in playing the brinkmanship game, those in government are looking to the High Command for a signal.

While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is prepared to make a last ditch effort to save the deal, his party seems to prioritise the longevity of the UPA government. The fact is that all political parties, including the ruling Congress, have brazenly shifted goal posts on the deal, so much so that the very credibility of India on honouring bilateral agreements is now in question.

The Left first expressed satisfaction on the prime minister’s August 17, 2006 assurances and then subsequently invoked their anti-American reservations to scuttle the deal. The BJP decided to distance itself from the Left’s position by asking for a domestic legislation to counter the Hyde Act, but then backtracked to harp on renegotiation of the 123 agreement singularly at the behest of one leader who had no qualms in calling his pro-deal party colleagues American stooges. As for UPA allies, their new-found opposition to the operationalisation of the deal comes from a fear of early general elections. One can safely wager that if the allies were told that elections were to be held only in 2009, they would all come on board.

... contd.