The country's atomic establishment on Wednesday threw its weight behind the civil nuclear liability bill in the face of the stand-off between the government and the Opposition and said there is a lot of "misunderstanding" about the regime.
Pitching for enactment of a law to fix civil damages caused by nuclear accidents, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Srikumar Banerjee said neither the Indian Environmental Protection Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991, nor the Indian Atomic Energy Act had provisions for damages caused due to war or radioactivity.
"Therefore, this legislation assumes great significance in the present context," he told PTI.
Currently and in the near future, the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) will be the only operator of nuclear power plants, he added.
With the Opposition unrelenting on its opposition to the legislation, the government on Monday beat a hasty retreat and deferred the introduction of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill in Parliament.
"India does not have a law for fixing civil liability for damages caused by the nuclear industry. The government wants to introduce the bill after a very careful study, but unfortunately there is lot of misunderstanding about it among the Parliamentarians which has to be corrected," Banerjee said.
Banerjee's views came against the backdrop of the government launching a bid to salvage the bill whose passage is a must for full implementation of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal.
The views of the country's top boss were also echoed by two former AEC chairmen Anil Kakodkar and M R Srinivasan.
"The Department of Atomic Energy has been working on the bill along with legal experts and the Centre for over a decade," Banerjee said and added that of the 30 countries operating nuclear power plants 28, barring India and Pakistan, had such legislations in place. "It is high time India has its own legislation soon."
