WASHINGTON, July 27: The US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a controversial US-India nuclear deal, rejecting amendments that aimed to put limits on New Delhi’s atomic weapons programme.

The bill cleared by a 359-68 vote was authored by Congressmen Henry Hyde and Tom Lantos, chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, of the House’s International Relations Committee.

“History will regard what we do today as a tidal shift in relations between India and the United States. This will be known as the day when Congress signalled definitively the end of the Cold War paradigm governing interactions between New Delhi and Washington,” said Rep. Lantos.

Democratic Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, head of a bipartisan non-proliferation task force, however, warned that by offering the deal to India, the Bush administration was pouring “nuclear fuel on the fire of an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race” because it would allow New Delhi to expand its nuclear weapons production to upward of 50 bombs a year from seven.

He was quoting from a recent statement by a former head of Indian intelligence, J. K. Sinha, who said that the deal would enable India to produce 50 more nuclear warheads a year than it could at present.