Published: Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010, 1:44 IST
By Harish Gupta | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_cap-on-nuclear-liability-might-be-jacked-up-to-1-billion_1400092
With the liability of Bhopal gas tragedy victims behind it, the government is bracing up to deal with another liability — the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh is keen that the bill crosses the first major hurdle at the parliamentary standing committee on science and technology. Committee chairman T Subbarami Reddy is working overtime to complete the task before the monsoon session of parliament begins, on July 26.
Singh is leaving for the G20 Summit in Canada on June 25, where he is expected to have one-on-ones with top leaders including US president Barack Obama. This is probably the reason he wants to ensure there is no any ambiguity on
the bill.
The N-liability bill tackles the key questions of fixing financial liability on the supplier of the plant and operator of the reactor, in the event of a nuclear disaster.
At present, clause 6 proposes an amount of $450 million dollars (Rs2,087-crore) as liability. However, the opposition and UPA allies have opposed the meagre compensation amount.
Though government officials who appeared before the standing committee last week withdrew the compensation clauses saying the Union Cabinet had not discussed it yet, there is a strong possibility that the cap on liability may be raised to somewhere between $750 million to $1 billion.
In any case, government is the sole operator of the existing 18 nuclear plants in the country. There are five plants under the consideration and as per government data, it plans to set up 23 more.
While the UPA government is expecting the bill to be passed in the monsoon session, some of the standing committee members want to visit nuclear plants to get a first-hand experience before making any recommendation. There is a possibility that the standing committee will make its report final before the monsoon session.
Sources in the government, however, dispel that there is any connection with the prime minister’s eagerness for the passage of the bill and his meeting with the US president. Obama will visit India in November and it is expected that government will sort out the nuclear liability issue by then.
