Pranab Mukherjee

New Delhi, July 12: India’s ambassador to Vienna, Saurabh Kumar, was authorised to “initial” the India-specific safeguards agreement and inform the IAEA to “circulate” it among its board of governors on the evening of July 8 — a day before the Left parties went to Rashtrapati Bhavan to withdraw support to the UPA government, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee confirmed to The Telegraph today.

The authorisation was directly given by Mukherjee and not Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was attending the G8 summit in Hokkaido at the time.

Mukherjee also underlined that he had not spoken out of turn when he told reporters in a televised news conference on July 8 that the government would not seek the approval of the IAEA board before winning a confidence vote on the floor of the Lok Sabha.

“At the press conference, I said we will go to the IAEA board for approval after attaining the vote of confidence. That does not mean that we cannot circulate the draft among the members,” Mukherjee said, rebutting criticism from the Left and the BJP that the government had committed “midnight deceit” and “betrayed” the people by going to the IAEA before establishing its majority in Parliament.

The external affairs minister, who was the government’s chief interlocutor during the interminable and intractable negotiations with the Left parties on the nuclear deal, sought to draw a fine distinction between “approaching” the IAEA and seeking its “approval”, although the two are interlinked.

He said that in order to come up before the board of governors for approval, the draft agreement would first have to be circulated among the members — usually 45 days in advance.

With the IAEA board expected to hold a meeting on July 28, India was already “behind time”. So, once it became clear that the Left would withdraw support (and hence lose their veto over the next steps of the deal), the government decided to allow the (till then) “frozen” text of the safeguards draft to be circulated among the members.

Outlining the sequence of events that took place on July 8, Mukherjee recalled that CPM general secretary Prakash Karat informed the media around 12.30pm that “the time has come” to withdraw support and said they would formally convey that decision to President Pratibha Patil the next day (July 9).

Soon after that announcement, Mukherjee met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and told her of the Left’s decision. They both agreed that the government should seek a trust vote in Parliament in view of the Left’s withdrawal of support. Otherwise, the Left as well as other Opposition parties would take to the streets and demand the government’s resignation.

Mukherjee did not elaborate on the decision but it was significant since a section within the Congress and the Samajwadi Party had suggested that there was no need for a trust vote and “letters of support” for the UPA to the President should suffice.

But Mukherjee felt — and Sonia concurred — that the government should not let things drag but unilaterally announce its readiness to face a vote of confidence by convening a special session of Parliament.

Mukherjee then spoke to the Prime Minister in Japan — around 2.30-3.00pm IST — who readily agreed to the proposal. Since the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA) decides on the dates of regular Parliament sessions but only the Prime Minister can take a call on special sessions, it was agreed that the dates of the special session would be finalised after Manmohan’s return to the country.

It was later in the evening that Mukherjee made his now-controversial remarks at the media conference about the government’s readiness to face a trust vote and not “operationalise” the nuclear deal or even seek the IAEA’s approval of the safeguards agreement if it failed to win it.

The same evening, Mukherjee formally authorised India’s ambassador to initial and circulate the draft. International agreements, the minister explained, can be signed by the Prime Minister or the external affairs minister or any other senior official under authorisation. Since the ambassador in Vienna holds the rank of “minister plenipotentiary,” he was entitled to initial the document with the authorisation of the external affairs minister.

Mukherjee dismissed queries as to why the government was so secretive about the whole thing, saying it was plain “common sense” applicable to all organisations that an agenda note had to be “circulated” among members in order to get approval. The government had committed no wrong by keeping this step under wraps till it was revealed by the IAEA spokesman late on July 9 (Indian time), he insisted.

He also chose not to comment on the fact that none of the top officials — national security adviser M.K. Narayanan and foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon included — who briefed journalists on the flight back from Japan on the night of July 9 chose to remain curiously tight-lipped about India’s decision to circulate the safeguards draft.

It was only after the Prime Minister’s flight landed in Delhi well after midnight that the media learnt of the government’s decision – taken well over 24 hours before.

Mukherjee did not allude to the other controversy about the Prime Minister’s mid-air “we will go to the IAEA very soon” remark made within an hour of take-off on the morning of July 7.

Mukherjee’s letter to the Left leaders scheduling a meeting of the UPA-Left committee on July 10 was dispatched later that same morning – but the Prime Minister’s remarks made the letter redundant. The letter to the Left parties had been drafted well in advance and the Prime Minister had seen it before he left for Japan, the external affairs minister said.