DELHI OPINION ASIA — As elections progress, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party are in more trouble over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal than they will readily acknowledge, with the distinct possibility of losing power.
If either the Communist Party of India's Third Front or the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance form the government, there certainly exists the mild possibility that the nuclear deal will be renegotiated. And this could add to the already growing downturn in India's relations with the Obama administration.
The Obama administration considers the nuclear deal another one of the toxic legacies of the Bush administration, in addition to the failed U.S. economy and the disastrous Iraq and Af-Pak wars. U.S. President Barack Obama tried but failed to introduce amendments to the nuclear deal as a senator, which was eventually passed by bipartisan consensus in the U.S. Congress.