After two days of detailed deliberations, the United States Congress now has one Bill for the Indo-US nuclear deal. It’s learnt that the House and Senate versions of the Bill were reconciled late tonight on Capitol Hill paving the way for a historic exception for India from the strict US non-proliferation regime. This takes the US Administration just one step away from being legally empowered to operationalise the deal and enter into an agreement with India.

According to the last update, the reconciled version had gone for the final clearance of the House Rules Committee. Sources said there has been re-organisation of content in the two Bills so that most of India’s concerns are now non-binding with several of the reporting requirements now clubbed under a couple of “manageable provisions.”

It’s learnt that the Senate’s insistence for “annual certification” by the US Administration that India is complying with all the conditions may be refined to a general reporting requirement that the US government does in the case of several other laws.

While the final version of the Bill is still be put out officially, the understanding is that the ban on enrichment and reprocessing technology could also be further qualified. The language may be more positive now to include circumstances or conditions under which the law may not apply on the US Administration.

On the Iran nuclear issue, however, the House of Representatives, at the instance of Tom Lantos, agreed by voice vote that the House version of the Bill must defer to the language used by the Senate.

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