US 'permission’ to India to buy Russian oil: Congress slams 'cowardly' Modi govt

Amid the West Asia conflict, the Congress on Saturday (March 7) attacked the Narendra Modi government over US officials' remarks on India's Russian oil purchase and accused it of being “cowardly and compromised”.

The Opposition party's jibe came after the US said it has given "permission" to India to buy Russian oil that is on ships already floating on waterways with a view to easing supplies around the world amid the US-Israel military action against Iran.

What Congress said

Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has given the Modi government its certificate for faithfully following President Trump’s orders.

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“Does anything more need to be said about how cowardly and compromised the self-proclaimed 56-inch chest has become?” Ramesh said on X (formerly Twitter), posting a video clip of Bessent, in which the US Treasury secretary says that the US has let India buy Russian oil “to ease the temporary gap of oil around the world”.

Dismissing Opposition charges, a senior government functionary on Friday said India has never been dependent on permission from any nation to buy Russian oil and though the US sanctions' waiver allowing refiners to purchase it removes friction, it does not define the country's policy.

Russian oil continued to flow into India even after the US objected to it and imposed sanctions, the functionary said, citing a 2013 adjustment done by the then Congress government in oil imports under US sanctions.

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After the US announced that it is issuing a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil, the BJP on Friday had termed the development a success of the strategic oil diplomacy under Prime Minister Modi, and said it's a “big egg on the face of anti-India Rahul Gandhi and the Congress”.

Bessent's remarks

In an interview with Fox Business on Friday, Bessent said, “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.” “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 Russian oil. We may unsanction other Russian oil,” he said.

Bessent added that there are hundreds of millions of sanctioned barrels of crude on the water, and in essence, by unsanctioning them, the 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 Trump administration officials have also been saying that the US has now allowed India to buy Russian oil, months after President Donald Trump had imposed 25 per cent punitive tariffs on Delhi for its purchases of oil from Moscow.

(With agency inputs)