US to remove Indian companies from barred list to allow cooperation in nuclear power

In a breakthrough for the India-US civil nuclear ties, the US will soon remove several Indian companies from the list of 'entities' barred from doing business in nuclear power with the US or its allies.

Some of the bans on the Indian companies are decades old.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday said the US is finalising steps to remove all roadblocks and remove Indian companies from the 'entities list' to allow cooperation in the civil nuclear area.

India and the US had signed the Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in March 2006, but the bans on Indian companies remained.

Among those on the entity list are Indian state-owned companies like Indira Gandhi Atomic Research Centre and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

Sullivan said, "Today, I can announce that the United States is now finalising the necessary steps to remove long-standing regulations that have prevented civil nuclear cooperation between India's leading nuclear entities and US companies."

“The paperwork will be done soon but this will be an opportunity to turn the page on some of the frictions of the past and create opportunities for entities that have been on restricted lists in the United States to come off those lists and enter into deep collaboration with the United States, with our private sector, scientists and technologists to move civil nuclear,” the US NSA said while speaking at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, on Monday.

Earlier in the day, he met NSA Ajit Doval.

On the need to remove Indian entities from the barred list, Sullivan said this was the “next major” step in cementing the India-US partnership.

Sullivan said that in the next decade, “we will see American and Indian firms working together to build the next generation of semiconductor technologies, and American and Indian astronauts conducting cutting-edge research and space exploration together”.