|
New Delhi : The government will move the nuclear liability bill next week with 18 amendments which will include creation of three slabs to assess liability. There will be a Rs 1500 crore cap for large nuclear power plants, a Rs 300 crore cap for institutions involved in reprocessing fuel and a Rs 100 crore cap for smaller research reactors.
Sources said the differentiation is on the lines of the Japanese liability laws. The government also proposes to charge a cess on existing nuclear power to build up a fund which will cover liability between the no-fault stage and the international agreement. The Convention for Supplementary Compensation will be considered later but is an inevitable part of new Indian liability regime.
Meanwhile speaking to media on Friday, MoS PMO Prithviraj Chavan expressed confidence that India will soon begin to sign commercial contracts to build a new range of atomic power plants.
Chavan said that suggestions offered by the main opposition had been accepted and the controversial linking of liability conditions with a specific operator-supplier contract had been done away.
He made it clear that suppliers can be prosecuted by operators in an Indian courts irrespective of whether there is a written contract or not. The controversial insertion in the report of the standing committee examining the bill seeking to make liability contingent on a written contract had been done away with. He said 18 official amendments will be moved.
Chavan said India has already in place technical agreements with countries like France. Once the bill is passed, India will look to sign commercial agreements in the field of nuclear energy with such countries.
Meanwhile on Friday, the Cabinet approved the recommendations and 18 amendments suggested by a 31-member parliamentary standing committee on science and technology which examined the bill and tabled its report in both houses of parliament on Aug 18.
The Cabinet meeting, presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh most importantly approved the panel's recommendations that include a suggestion for tripling the operators' liability from Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,500 crore.
The panel recommended that the government increase the compensation cap for victims of a nuclear disaster. It also recommended doubling the period for victims claim to 20 years. Chavan however out rightly rejected allegations that the proposed civil nuclear liability bill was designed to benefit any particular country. He said on Aug 20 "there have been concerns that this Bill was designed to benefit a particular country. This is totally wrong. I deny it emphatically."
|
