NEW DELHI, July 4: India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday opposed a controversial nuclear deal agreed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the United States and said parliament should be empowered to check pacts that compromise India's sovereignty or territorial integrity.

The reference to “territorial integrity” appears to have little to do with last month's agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy with Washington and could be in fact aimed at curbing the Singh administration's negotiating power for settling the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan.

“The BJP is of the clear view that this (nuclear) agreement is an assault on our nuclear sovereignty and our foreign policy options. We are, therefore, unable to accept this agreement as finalised,” former BJP ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha said in a joint statement.

Demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine the text of the agreement with the United States in detail, the BJP said that a “parliamentary approval be secured before this deal is signed; and that all further action on it should be suspended until this sequence is completed.”

It then added a crucial paragraph: “The manner in which this agreement has been pushed through, leads us to further demand that appropriate amendments be made in the Constitution and laws to ensure that all agreements which affect the country's sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security shall be ratified by Parliament.”

The BJP noted that the nuclear deal required each side to implement it “in accordance with its national laws and regulations and its licence requirements. This meant that the implementation of the deal shall be governed by the provisions of the Hyde Act of 2006, the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which are its national laws on this subject, and its licensing requirements relating to the supply of nuclear materials to India {article 2(1)}.”

“The confidence with which US officials have asserted that the Agreement is Hyde Act bound flows from this provision. Which act will India enforce on the US?”

“Nuclear testing has not been mentioned in the agreement. According to the Government of India this is a matter of great comfort for us. This view is entirely untenable,” the BJP statement said.

“When national laws apply, which includes the NPT, the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Hyde Act of 2006 which specifically forbid nuclear tests, where is the question of India having the freedom to test once we enter into this agreement? In other words, we are being forced to accept a bilateral CTBT with more stringent provisions than the multilateral CTBT.”

The Left Front that lends crucial support to Dr Singh's minority government had opposed the nuclear deal but it now wants to study the text of the agreement before announcing its final position on the issue.