'No bid to help US firms'

“To say that this is being done to promote American interests and to help American corporation, I think, is far from truth,” said the prime minister making an intervention during the debate on the Bill in the Lok Sabha.

The prime minister said that he had been accused of promoting US interests earlier also, particularly when he, as the then finance minister, had presented the budget in the House in 1992; a year after initiating the economic reforms. “History will be the judge,” he said. He said nuclear power was an option and the country could not ignore it. “To say that we have anyway compromised India’s national interests will be a travesty of facts,” said Singh.