Under PM Nehru, India’s first Atomic Energy Act |
Parliament passed a new atomic energy law towards the end of 2025. The legislation, titled the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India, opens the atomic energy sector, previously the exclusive domain of government entities, to private players. Opposition MPs urged that a parliamentary standing committee scrutinise the Bill. But the government pushed for its passage in the last two days of the Winter Session, with the debate lasting 11 hours and 64 MPs participating.
One year after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US Congress became the first legislature to establish a framework for regulating nuclear energy in 1946. The provisions of this law were refined over several months, during which scientists and military personnel involved in the atomic sector actively lobbied to influence its content. The law transferred control of nuclear technology from the military to civilian authority.
The US Congress created a civilian Atomic Energy Commission, a congressional oversight committee, a military liaison and a general advisory committee composed of scientists. Following the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom made their own statutes in quick succession. The British........