News from “The Hindu” Three top scientists caution on deal Sandeep Dikshit NEW DELHI: Three of the country’s top nuclear scientists have said that once the nuclear deal is in place, India’s commercial nuclear interaction with other countries will be “firmly controlled” by Washington through the Hyde Act enforced through the U.S. “stranglehold” on the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The scientists — P. K. Iyengar (former chairman, Atomic Energy Commission), A. Gopalakrishnan (former Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chief) and A.N. Prasad (former Bhabha Atomic Research Centre Director — have written a letter of appeal to Members of Parliament (MPs) on the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation and pointed out several lacunae in the draft safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “We are strongly of the opinion that the government should not seek the IAEA Board’s approval for the current draft safeguards agreement until its implications are debated more fully within the country and with a group of experts who were not party to the IAEA negotiations,” they observed, adding that analysts had convincingly refuted the government’s main reason for pushing the deal — energy security to the country. The deal will not be governed by the bilateral 123 Agreement because it is anchored in U.S. domestic laws, including the Hyde Act, which contains several stipulations “extraneous to
