Today, can any sane person claim that there is “a broad national consensus” in the country justifying the PM’s decision to go ahead with the deal? The resistance from his erstwhile Left allies and the BJP began as soon as the joint statement was issued. How a manipulative PM betrayed the Left, forcing it to withdraw support to the UPA Government on July 8, is well known. Equally well known is how he violated the public commitment given by his own
Foreign Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, that the Government would go to the IAEA only after securing the vote of confidence in Parliament. But the nation must be alerted against a new conspiracy afoot to commit another betrayal. The Telegraph of Kolkata carried a front-page report on July 15, titled, Sink or survive, deal done. Quoting highly placed official sources, it said: “The nuclear deal is ‘done’, whether the UPA survives the trust vote or not. The deal will happen because the Government is clear that it is in the supreme national interest. If the Government has to go in the process, let it go.” An official source put it even more arrogantly: “As far as India is concerned, the deal has fled our shores. And India does not have an extradition treaty with Austria (its capital Vienna is the headquarters of the IAEA) to bring it back.”
