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NEW DELHI: Congress on Saturday launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the recent US 30-day waiver allowing New Delhi to buy Russian oil. The attack was charged with the quote of Donald Trump’s aide Scott Bessent, who said the US had given “permission” to India to accept oil from Moscow.The largest opposition party took to X to condemn and question the diplomacy of the Modi government, saying that a country as vast as India with 1.4 billion people is “waiting for Washington’s approval”, reiterating its charge that the prime minister is “compromised”.Quoting US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, the Congress wrote on X: “Permission? For India? A country of 1.4 billion people waiting for Washington’s approval. This is the cost of a compromised Prime Minister.”“India fought for freedom so that no foreign power could dictate terms to us. Yet today, under a weak Prime Minister, the US is openly talking about giving India ‘permission’,” it added.Slamming India’s diplomacy, the party called the situation a “humiliation”. Calling on the prime minister to explain, Congress added: “Indians are not actors in someone else’s script. PM Modi, your silence on this statement is deafening. The people of India deserve an explanation.”Earlier to this, the US has said it has given “permission” to India to buy Russian oil that is already on ships at sea, in an effort to maintain global supplies during the Middle East conflict.“The world is very well supplied in oil. Yesterday, the Treasury (Department) agreed to let our allies in India start buying Russian oil that was already on the water,” US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview to Fox Business on Friday.“The Indians had been very good actors. We had asked them to stop buying sanctioned Russian oil this fall. They did. They were going to substitute it with US oil. But to ease the temporary gap of oil around the world, we have given them permission to accept the Russian oil. We may unsanction other Russian oil,” he said.Bessent added that there are hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels of crude currently on ships. He said that by removing sanctions on these shipments, the US treasury could quickly increase supply in the market.“There are hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels of sanctioned crude on the water, and in essence, by unsanctioning them, Treasury can create supply. And we are looking at that. We are going to keep a cadence of announcing measures to bring relief to the market during this conflict,” he said.Several other officials in the Trump administration have also said that the US has now allowed India to buy Russian oil. This comes months after President Donald Trump imposed 25 per cent punitive tariffs on India over its purchases of oil from Russia.US energy secretary Chris Wright also spoke about the move in a post on X on Friday. He said the United States is “allowing our friends in India” to take the Russian oil that is already on ships near Southern Asia, refine it and quickly move it into the market to ensure steady supply during the ongoing US-Israel war against Iran.“We have implemented short term measures to help keep oil prices down. We are allowing our friends in India to take oil that is already on ships, refine it, and move those barrels into the market quickly. A practical way to get supply flowing and ease pressure,” Wright said.In an interview to ABC News Live, Wright said global oil supplies are strong in the long term, but there is a need to quickly bring more oil into the market in the short term.
Source: Times of India
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