Former Prime Minister V P Singh on Sunday vehemently opposed the “hollow” India-United States civil nuclear deal. He said that New Delhi should not sign the “optical illusion” without the prime minister explaining to the nation through Parliament its cost-benefit ratio and the quantum of energy production it would actually result in.

He also threatened to launch a mass campaign against the agreement by personally touring all state capitals. Mr Singh said, “all this hype about the agreement seems to be a sham and the agreement itself a shame. No international agreement should be signed without Parliament’s approval”.

The former prime minister criticised the government for claiming that the deal recognised India as a nuclear-weapon state, saying that it actually described India only as a “state with advanced nuclear technology”.

Alleging that India had signed a “charter of dependence” on the US, he stated, while India had only got the right for consultation, the US had reserved for itself the right to decision in the deal.

He added, “all that the US has to do is to issue a notice for termination of the deal and terminate it within one year of going so without any conditions. This is not only in case of nuclear tests, but also if in Washington’s judgement, India falls short of compliance norms. They can terminate the deal if India fails to explain to US’ satisfaction that security environment was not changed that a test was necessary”.

Singh said the deal has  given the US the right to not only take back all nuclear and non-nuclear material provided by it, but also any fissile material produced by equipment given by it.

This implied that they reserved the right to take back even those material that India had bought after paying huge amounts.

Calling the agreement just a “promisary note”, he said negotiations for reprocessing rights would take place only after India set up a National Reprocessing Facility, which would take at least five years.