SHANTI Act builds on former PM Manmohan Singh’s legacy

Late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was remembered for many things on his first death anniversary this week. But his most abiding legacy that found resonance in the reminiscences of friends across the political spectrum was the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Everyone who gathered in the Capital on December 26 to honour the departed leader's memory agreed that the BJP-led NDA dispensation's just-enacted SHANTI law built on the Manmohan Singh legacy.

It was after all the Indo-US Nuclear Deal that had Singh bare political fangs for the first-ever time. By staking his government for the deal in 2008 and winning the vote of confidence despite opposition from the BJP, Left and even sections of the Congress, Singh proved he could be a politician when he wanted to be one.

The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act 2025 recognises the catalysing effect of nuclear energy in transforming India's technological landscape and sits well with the objectives for which Singh had risked it all in 2008. Two principal arguments the former PM had extended in favour of the deal were - it will cater to India's energy needs and India would be able to get on a reciprocal basis nuclear fuel and technique from the US and other Nuclear Suppliers Group nations.

Late prime minister's closest confidant in the UPA regime Montek Singh Ahluwalia clearly remembers the complexities that preceded the conclusion of the landmark agreement and says the test of its success does not lie in whether we have nuclear reactors today or not.

"Actually the Indo-US Nuclear Deal was a precondition for a lot of cooperation in defence and security areas. If we had not done the deal, none of the defence cooperation now taking place between India and the US would have been possible. So it was like laying the ground floor on which the whole edifice was built and I think it was quite a masterly action by Manmohan Singh. At the very end, it actually led to him offering Sonia Gandhi his resignation because she was under a lot of pressure from the Left," Ahluwalia, then deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, recalls.

Ahluwalia, whom Singh had wanted as his finance minister in the UPA-1 (a fact Pranab Mukherjee confirmed in his memoirs), also speaks of how after the Left brought a vote of no confidence against him, the late PM finessed the move by seeking a vote of confidence on the deal and won. Former President APJ Abdul Kalam helped Singh by speaking to Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh for support to the deal.

The bedrock Manmohan Singh laid in 2008 went on to find further consolidation under PM Modi of the BJP which had earlier opposed the Indo-US deal both inside and outside Parliament.

The saffron party had even brought out a booklet titled, "Why does BJP oppose the Indo-US Nuclear Deal?" detailing reasons for opposition to the move with BJP's prime ministerial candidate LK Advani famously lamenting that the deal curtailed "India's right to Pokhran-III."

But obviously those are bygone days. With climate change knocking at our doors and atomic energy, a non-fossil fuel, seen as key to India's commitment of net zero emission by 2070, PM Modi has pushed ahead with a major reform which, in a first, allows private sector engagement in the nuclear sector.

The new uniform law replaces the Atomic Energy Act of 1962, which empowered the government to regulate the segment, and the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act, which gave nuclear operators access to legal routes against equipment suppliers in the event of an accident.

SHANTI Act permits private entry into nuclear sector and does away with supplier liability clauses of the 2010 law, a change the Congress has vehemently opposed. The bill was brought to the Lok Sabha on December 15, cleared by it on December 17, passed by the Rajya Sabha the following day and assented to by President Droupadi Murmu on December 20 - all in under a week.

As India liberalised the atomic energy space, the words of late PM Manmohan Singh resonated loud and clear.

When asked which one did he reckon as his top contribution during a decade of prime ministership, Singh had, on January 3, 2014, said, "The best moment for me was when we were able to strike a nuclear deal with the US to end the nuclear apartheid which had sought to stifle the process of social and economic change and technical progress of our country in many ways."

Manmohan Singh's legacy endures.