India’s Nuclear Law of Convenient Blind Faith

Given the stakes, we assume that any failure at a nuclear plant would be met with unyielding law and absolute accountability. The SHANTI Act asks citizens to throw that assumption out the window.

Nuclear laws are supposed to be exacting and impenetrable because the cost of failure is simply way too high. Yet, The Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025, passed in great urgency and in the name of progress, redraws what safety enforcement, risk allocation and indiscriminate discretion would look like, quite connivingly.

Private participation, in itself, is not a problem and is widely seen as necessary for expanding India’s nuclear capacity. However, the issue lies in how this participation is structured. The Act allows coupling of licenses, which means that everything from reactor construction and operation to electricity sale can be controlled by a single entity. This can drastically reduce the number of independent safety and accountability checkpoints.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this framework is that it caps the operator’s liability at approximately Rs. 3000 crores and that it completely nullifies the supplier’s liability. Now, one can appreciate the argument made by its supporters that liability needs to be capped for insurance purposes and that unlimited supplier liability has so far restricted foreign and private participation in the sector. However, the Act goes much, much further than necessary to ease our wellwishers’ worries.

Instead of drafting a balanced law that mandates supplier contribution to pooled funds or offers fault based recourse in cases of negligence, the Act fully insulates suppliers and transfers the risk to public funds such as the Nuclear Liability Fund. What it ultimately does is transfer the catastrophic financial consequences of a nuclear failure from private actors to the Indian public, without them ever being consulted. 

Discretion runs rampant in the Act as a design principle. On some of the most important questions, the law takes a backseat and lets the government decide later. It can choose what information is prohibited, exempt operators from license requirements in certain cases, frame worker safety rules on its own, decide how damage claims are handled, and even change the Schedules through notification. One can’t help but wonder why the law was drafted so capriciously in the first place. The line of thought that leads one to the answer is less a journey and more a straight line.

The Act also shuts the door on civil courts. Instead, cases must go to the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity, established under the Electricity Act, 2003. The problem is that it says next to nothing about the composition of the tribunal, especially the two Technical Members. There are no directives to ensure impartiality or prevent conflicts of interest. When courts are out of reach and the alternative forum is potentially biased, the idea of justice starts to feel illusory. 

Moreover, it strips the citizens of the tools to question or challenge the decisions  as matters under this law are kept outside the purview of the Right to Information Act. Officials acting in ‘good faith’ are shielded from legal consequences, and the government is given the power to ‘remove difficulties’ allowing it to influence the implementation of the law without the matter returning to the Parliament. Altogether, these provisions pave the way for a system where decisions are taken behind closed doors, and are insulated from any form of challenge. 

Supporters of the SHANTI Act argue that private entry was long overdue, that liability caps are necessary for insurance and investor confidence, and that no country runs a nuclear programme without accepting some level of risk. Taken in isolation, these arguments are compelling.

However, they rest on one critical assumption : that the system will be backed by layered regulation, transparency and public trust. This Act doesn’t even offer a modicum of that. Instead of independent oversight, it concentrates power in the hands of the executive. Instead of offering transparency, it asks citizens to simply trust that things will be handled well. Instead of strong safeguards, it leans heavily on discretion. 

What’s missing then, is an earnest acknowledgment of the risks the SHANTI Act creates, and a clear, credible roadmap to manage them. If India wants to expand safely, independent regulators must be at the helm of oversight. Safety rules, claims processes and disclosure norms have to be written into the law itself, not left to be decided later. Liability may be capped, but not at the cost of accountability, just as specialised tribunals should serve to assist, not replace, the ordinary course of justice. Lastly, transparency cannot be seen as an inconvenience to be managed and needs to be treated as the very foundation of public trust, or else governance risks drifting from consent toward imposition.

Without these measures, the government demands citizens to shoulder the consequences first, and ask questions later, if at all. A law dealing with worst case scenarios can never  merely be built for best case intentions. Otherwise, the SHANTI Act is just a carefully packaged hazard, its dangers revealed only when the damage is already done.