Keen on moving forward with the country's rapidly developing ties with the United States, a group of Indian Parliamentarians on Monday asserted that the Indo-US relationship was not hostage to the success or failure of the civilian nuclear deal.
Participating in a discussion at the India-US Forum of Parliamentarians, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said, "Indo-US relationship is multi-faceted, multi-cornered and multi-dimensional. It is wrong to peg it on just the nuclear deal."
He, however, added that "the deal is like a key to a lock. The door is full of possibilities."
Though the Indo-US partnership will survive, the deal would give an impetus to it.
Urging opponents of the deal to look at it in a realistic manner, he said, "It will fulfil India's energy needs."
According to Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad, there is a whole big world in the Indo-US relationship which we should not overlook.
"Don't judge the Indo-US relationship in terms of the success or failure of the deal," he said.
Prasad said though the Left has an ideological problem, his party had different objections to the deal.
"We don't want to close the option of going in for a nuclear test when the time comes, especially because of our hostile neighbourhood. Indo-US amity was initiated by the National Democratic Alliance government and if the Congress takes it forward, we are sure to support it," he said.
Terming opposition to the deal as a "legacy problem" and not something which will be a major hurdle to Indo-US ties, member of Parliament B J Panda, who is the chairperson of the forum said, "The deal has been a complete change of paradigm. It makes available energy which has been denied to us."
Even "if the deal is derailed the Indo-US relationship will not suffer," he added.
Pitching for the deal on the same lines, Singhvi, who will lead the Parliamentary debate on the deal on behalf of the Congress in Rajya Sabha said, "This will reverse an isolation of 40 years."
On political opposition the deal faces, the Congress spokesperson said, "When the Left makes a valid point, we do backtrack like the PPF interest rates. You cannot make everybody agree to a decision taken in national interest," he added.
