By IANS
New Delhi : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday termed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement in parliament on the Indo-US nuclear deal as “a bundle of the same untruths, half-truths and pure white lies that the prime minister has been dishing out to the people day in and day out”.
BJP vice president Yashwant Sinha, accompanied by former union minister Arun Shourie, told newspersons soon after the prime minister’s statement in both houses of parliament that “the prime minister is clearly misleading the nation when he makes assertions to the country”.
Sinha said: “The prime minister has cleverly mentioned all that goes in his favour. But has avoided giving the full picture and the inconvenient aspects of the deal.”
He reminded that “on issues on which the agreement is silent like annual certification by the US president and the right of India to undertake nuclear tests, the provisions of the Hyde Act will apply”.
Sinha also said: “The prime minister has conveniently ignored the sequence of legislative action in the US and has pretended in his statement as if the Hyde Act does not exist. This is nothing but an ostrich-like attitude.”
Reacting to the prime minister’s interview to an English daily that was published Saturday, Sinha held that it was against the decorum of parliament for the PM to speak outside when parliament was in session. He was particularly incensed that the PM had said in the interview: “the deal is signed and sealed and it is non-negotiable”.
Sinha charged: “The prime minister has reduced parliament to a farce. If the deal is signed and sealed and etched in stone, why does he want parliament to go through the charade of a debate on it? Never before has parliament been treated in such cavalier fashion.”
He asserted that “neither on fuel supplies nor on reprocessing has the US given clear-cut assurances”.
According to him, “The closing down of Cirus and the shifting of the core Apsara reactor from BARC will have a direct and debilitating impact on our capacity to produce fissile material and therefore on our nuclear weapons programme.
“The placing of future fast breeder reactors, which is an indigenous programme, under IAEA safeguards is an entirely unnecessary commitment made in the separation plan and will have an impact on our three stage nuclear programme and our R&D programme,” he claimed.