Varadarajan's Questionable Nuclear Liability Claims about South Korea and Hungary

With the report of the Parliamentary standing committee recommending a change to the controversial clause 17(b) of the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill (my thoughts on the committee report can be read here), Siddharth Varadarajan has already fired his opening salvo against it today in this so-called news item. I say so-called because the author's sentiment comes across plainly in the text.

I have explained the issues with this provision in earlier posts (see here, here and here) and will not repeat them here. In support of his view that India ought to have retained that provision, he claims that "Globally, South Korea and Hungary provide the operators with a right of recourse against the suppliers in the event of gross negligence, regardless of whether or not the contract provides for it or not." As far as I know, this is simply not true - in my previous post, I had explained the position taken by the South Korean law which allows the contractual arrangement between the parties to prevail over the default position laid down by the enactment. Hungary is a signatory to the Vienna convention which explicitly limits the operator's right to recourse (under article X) if expressly provided by contract or the incident resulted from the act or omission done with intent to cause damage, i.e. in other words, provisions equivalent to cl.17(a) and cl.17(c) in the Indian bill.