Is the Nuclear Liability Bill good for India?
Srikumar Banerjee, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and ex-officio Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, one of the drafters of the Bill is guilty of ignoring the consequences of possible nuclear disaster because his text has privatized profits and made liabilities public. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is in-charge of Department of Atomic Energy, appears to be guilty of dereliction of duty as well.
The Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests chaired by T Subbirami Reddy reveals their culpability quite categorically.
Is the new GoM on Bhopal gas tragedy a farce?
The 55-page PMO documents gathered using Right to Information Act (RTI) shows manifest collusion between ministers, officials and Dow Chemicals to protect it from the liabilities of industrial catastrophe of Bhopal.
The documents reveal how some of the ministers who have been made part of Group of Ministers (GoM) by the Prime Minister have been acting to safeguard the interest of the US corporation in question, which is liable for Bhopal disaster.
Uma Bharti to join BJP very soon
The Nitin Gadkari-led Bhartiya Janata Party is making all efforts to re-induct senior estranged leaders who are out of the party for various reasons.
In Bharti’s case, sources say, all the issues have been cleared. Initially there was opposition to her re-induction from RSS leader Suresh Soni. Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan and his supporters were also not happy with the move and so was party’s Rajya Sabha MP and in-charge of Madhya Pradesh Prabhat Jha.
Vanishing Hindu, Sikh minorities in Pakistan
Surprisingly, the Indian Human Rights activists and secular protagonists, who labour beyond all conceivable elasticity of the Indian system, do not shed even crocodile’s tears for the Hindu-Sikh-Christian minorities in Pakistan.
These matters are not even taken up either in first track or second track diplomatic talks with Pakistan. Systematic destruction of Hindu temples and desecration of Sikh temples do not attract attention of the Indian political leaders and so-called secularist compradors.
Nuclear Liability Bill, US Senate, and Indian Parliament
A similar civil liability bill in the US Senate could have been thrown out. The US government appears confident that it can buy this Bill as well as our parliamentarians who remain imprisoned by party whips.
The proposed Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Bill, which was to be introduced in the current Parliament session, is an exercise to provide State subsidy to foreign-nuclear reactor builders from the onus of the financial consequences of nuclear disasters, accidents and incidents.
UPA’s controversial Nuclear Liability Bill
In case of an accident due to the equipment supplied or any other external reason (design, construction), the damages would have to be paid only by the operator of the facility and not the supplier of the equipment (nuclear reactors) or the builder of the facility.
In such a scenario, the foreign companies supplying the reactors will make profits and the state-run and public-funded NPCIL would be liable to pay the compensation in case of an accident. So, while the Indian people would get paid with their own money in case of an accident, foreign companies would make a killing.
Giving away Kashmir – Part 3
The bogey of increasing international pressure is being crafted from within to target Indian public opinion at a time when dialogue with separatists is going on and Pakistan is unraveling from within.
A section from within the government and the political establishment wants to present a compromise in Jammu and Kashmir as a deliverance to the nation from a perpetual confrontation, even if it means abandoning its frontiers, its people in the state, its civilisational responsibility, central features of its eco-heritage, secularism and everything which India stands for.
