New Delhi, Aug 18 (IANS) A parliamentary panel report on the controversial civil nuclear liability bill was tabled in both houses of parliament Wednesday amid noisy protests and adjournments.
A section of opposition MPs said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) agreed to support the bill in trade-off with of the ruling Congress for giving a clean chit to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing case.
The report of the parliamentary standing committee recommends hiking the compensation cap from Rs.500 crore, as provided in the earlier draft, to Rs.1,500 crore in case of a nuclear accident.
The report also recommends shutting out private players from the nuclear sector in India that means either the government or the government-owned companies can operate nuclear plants in the country.
The Lok Sabha was adjourned till 2 p.m. and the Rajya Sabha for the day after the report was tabled.
This ends the standoff between the BJP and the Congress over the contentious bill.
The BJP said the increase in compensation and denying private operators ‘protects the interests of the country’.
‘This is what we wanted. The interests of the country needed to be protected and it was done only after the BJP exerted pressure on the government,’ BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told IANS outside parliament.
The non-National Democratic Alliance opposition parties, however, alleged that the Congress and the BJP had struck a deal to reach the consensus on the nuclear liability bill.
‘They have decided to go soft on Modi in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and the BJP supported the bill,’ Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad told reporters.
