BJP keeps options open on Bills

NEW DELHI: It is not a “no” or a “yes” from the Bharatiya Janata Party on two crucial pieces of legislation it wants passed — the nuclear civil liability Bill and the foreign universities Bill.

Party president Nitin Gadkari has asked the two leaders of Opposition — Sushma Swaraj in the Lok Sabha and Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha — to take a view keeping in mind the “national interest.”

The party's complaint is that the Manmohan Singh government has been less than transparent on the two proposed pieces of legislation and has “not consulted the Opposition,” as general secretary Ananth Kumar said here on Thursday. He was reminded that National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon had called on both Mr. Jaitley and Ms. Swaraj to explain in some detail the nuclear liability Bill and to ask for their support. More recently, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal had met Murli Manohar Joshi to explain the proposed foreign universities Bill. He dismissed that by saying the draft bills had not been given to the party.

However, he made it clear, as Mr. Jaitley had done earlier, that the BJP would have no difficulty in going along with the nuclear liability Bill if the government were to make it crystal clear in the Bill itself that it did not apply to private operators of nuclear plants, whether Indian or foreign. A second point of difference could be the cap of Rs. 500-crore liability spelt out for the operator.