US President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 19, 2025. Photo credit: Reuters
Two days after Parliament passed the SHANTI Act, which allows private participation in India’s nuclear sector and eases liability norms by limiting operator liability for a nuclear incident to ₹3,000 crore, US President Donald Trump on Friday (December 19, 2025) signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), advising the US domestic government (NDAA) to comply with international nuclear rules to cooperate with India’s foreign minister (Government of India) Standards’.
The NDAA, signed every fiscal year, is the key piece of legislation through which the US decides its annual budget and spending for its Defense Department. In this financial year, which runs from October 2025 to September 2026, part of the extensive document says the secretary of state will “… establish and maintain, as part of the US-India Strategic Security Dialogue, a joint consultative mechanism with the Government of India to review the implementation of the 2008 India-US Nuclear Agreement” and “… align (India’s) domestic nuclear liability rules with international standards.”
The development comes after Parliament passed the Sustainable Use and Development of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) bill, which repeals the existing legislation governing nuclear activities – the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLND) of 2010. This happened despite several calls and appeals to many opposition parliamentarians for the Sabbath Act. investigation.
The bill brings India closer to the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage and brings it into line with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage. It is this kind of alignment that NDAA 2026 promotes.
While the NDAA is tabled every year in the US and India finds mention in previous years’ NDAA for defense and security matters, this is the only time – according to a previous NDAA from The Hindu – since at least 2016 that India has been specifically mentioned in relation to the 2008 nuclear deal as well as the “nuclear civil liability rules”.
Terming the SHANTI Act as “vendor-driven”, the opposition on Saturday slammed the Center over the US law. “We now know for sure why the Prime Minister pushed the Shanti Act through Parliament earlier this week which, among other things, repealed key provisions of the CLND Act 2010… It was to restore SHANTI with his once good friend,” Congress Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X. “The SHANTI Act and the TRUMP Use Act can well be called the TRUMP Revision Act. He also attached a photo of the NDAA page 2026 with reference to India.
SHANTI encourages private companies to participate and potentially allows foreign funding to flow into India’s nuclear sector. It removes links to “supplier liability” – or the circumstances in which a nuclear power plant operator can legally seek compensation from a component supplier should it result in a nuclear accident. It is a controversial clause with a history, but also one that has frozen foreign participation, particularly American and French nuclear technology, to India.
Published – 20 Dec 2025 20:18 IST
