Whether or not the present Government of India will continue will be known by Tuesday evening. Whatever be the result of the voting on the Confidence Resolution, one thing is certain. The consensus of the House is absent for the Indo-US Nuclear deal. In spite of the several rounds of deliberations in the UPA-Left coordination Committee, they had finally to agree to disagree. Earlier the Government had ignored the demand of the main opposition to appoint a Parliamentary Committee to go into the deal.

The Government had given a solemn assurance to the nation that the it would not go to the IAEA before it gets Parliament's nod. It did not bother to honour this assurance. The senior most Minister of the Government had told the left that the draft agreement is a privileged document and so it cannot be shared with members of the coordination committee. Soon, it was available in the web-sites of several countries including the US.



True, in our country, the Government does not require the consent of the Parliament to sign any treaty with any foreign Government, though in many countries including the US, this is mandatory. Any responsible and responsive Government would have tried at least to guage the sense of the House.

In this context, the suggestion made by the Leader of the Opposition that the Constitution should be suitably amended to make it obligatory for the Government to seek and get the approval of the Parliament, at least with regard to important deals with foreign countries that have a ramification with regard to our strategic security aspects or the country's integrity, is worth considering.

In the absence of the will on the part of the Government to take the Parliament into confidence in such a vital issue as the Indo-US deal, there is real danger of the very institution of Parliament turning irrelevant.