145;Agreement between 2 individuals146;

The UPA government today is like a patient in the ICU room. If anyone talks about that patient, the first question naturally asked is, 8220;Is he going to survive or not?8221;

The UPA government today is like a patient in the ICU room. If anyone talks about that patient, the first question naturally asked is, 8220;Is he going to survive or not?8221; This situation has not been brought about by the Opposition, not by the NDA, not even by the Leftists with whom I disagree otherwise. This situation has been invited for itself by the government itself8230; and Mr Prime Minister, I am sorry to say, by you personally.

It is not in our nature to destabilise an elected government. You may do it; you have done it with Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda, I K Gujral; and you have done it with Vajpayee in 1999 when we were defeated just by one vote, and that too a vote of a person who had ceased to be an MP, and became a chief minister in another state. Therefore, I am drawing a distinction between defeating a government and destabilising the government.

I feel that the deal is not a deal between two sovereign countries; it seems to me to be a kind of an agreement between two individuals and if one of the individuals happens to be the prime minister of our country, he thinks that nothing else is more important than to fulfil this agreement. Mr Prime Minister, it does not give me happiness to find that a deal is being gone into in a way which makes India a junior partner in the agreement.

I do not want the world to be a unipolar world as it has become now. It must be a multipolar world and in that multipolar world, I want to see India as the principal pole. And in order to be a principal pole, you cannot agree that these countries are nuclear weapon states whereas India is permanently a non-nuclear weapon state; and this is in the agreement. This is not only in the agreement, but also in the proposed draft sent to the IAEA; it is on the basis of a chapter which relates to the non-nuclear weapon states.

We are not against nuclear energy. We are not against a very close relationship with America. India, which is the largest democracy in the world, should have a very close relationship with the strongest democracy of the world that is America. My charge is that this particular deal makes us a subservient partner.

The Constitution of India does not provide that an international agreement should be approved by the Parliament. But after this experience with the nuclear deal, I am of the view that the Constitution be amended so that in certain cases relating to security and in certain cases relating to the integrity of the country, the Parliament8217;s approval must be sought before entering into a deal8230;

India8217;s freedom in 1947 was accompanied by partition. But in 1950, it adopted a Constitution, which did not accept theocracy. Theocracy is alien to Indian culture and tradition. But does 8216;secularism8217; mean that you must have a kind of an allergy always to Hindus?

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There were serial blasts in Mumbai, in Malegaon, in Hyderabad, and in Jaipur and then there were terrorist attacks in Ayodhya, Varanasi, Jammu and Bangalore. There was a terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express8230;

Terrorism has no religion and terrorists do not belong to any religious community. Therefore, action against the terrorist will not annoy any community. It will not. But you are always concerned, on the basis of which, you keep on dragging a case like that of Afzal. It is not understandable.

Similarly, what has happened in the case of the Amarnath Yatra and the Amarnath Shrine Board and what has happened in the case of the Sethusamudram?