BJP wants time to review N-liability bill

Even as the government on Wednesday postponed its plans of bringing the nuclear damage bill in Parliament to next week, a compromise to break the logjam was worked out on Wednesday.

Even as the government on Wednesday postponed its plans of bringing the nuclear damage bill in Parliament to next week, a compromise to break the logjam was worked out on Wednesday.

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Faced with stiff resistance from the opposition over the nuclear liability Bill 2010, the government’s principal troubleshooter Pranab Mukherjee met the BJP brass to take note of the objections.

The meeting — with L.K. Advani, Sushma, Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and M.M. Joshi representing BJP, and Mukherjee, Prithviraj Chavan and P.K. Bansal representing the government — took place just before the scheduled meeting of the standing committee supposed to finalise recommendations and adopt the report on the bill.

The BJP on Tuesday had threatened to give dissent note (if the committee chooses to adopt the report on the bill).

While BJP listed their objections to the nuclear liability Bill asking the government not to rush to get it passed, the government is learnt to have agreed to extend the debate to the committee on science and technology to arrive on a common ground.

“The government seemed receptive to our point, which indicates we can still have some meeting ground,” said a senior BJP leader.

“After the meet, the BJP leaders seemed to be prepared to co-operate but they want some time to review the bill. The committee would meet on Tuesday to finalise the modifications and adopt the report,” a (Congress) committee member told HT.

Even as the government wanted to push the committee report and reintroduce the bill this week, the oppositions parties – BJP and Left raised several objections in past two days.

T. Subbirami Reddy, (head of committee) met the PM earlier in the day where he apprised him of the position of the bill.