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.

This could have constrained the conferees from making any major changes to the Senate language that asks the US Administration to ensure that India continues its support on the Iran nuclear issue consistent with the United Nations resolutions.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as reported in The Indian Express, had suggested the opposite: that the Senate defer to the House version. However, last-minute lobbying, sources said, is still under way.

Besides this, qualifications could be added in provisions requiring Washington to lobby with other countries in case there is violation of NSG and MTCR guidelines.

What is expected to be clarified is that such drastic steps cannot be automatically triggered without checking the intent of the Indian government.

Largely, it is believed that there have not been many deletions but a lot of effort has gone into refining the language and organising the various clauses of this Bill.

It is important to note here that the US has never made this exception for any country, which makes it an even more complicated legislative process.

The overall approach was positive with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist even speaking to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the phone last night. “I assured Prime Minister Singh that one of my top priorities for the remainder of this Congress is to enact this legislation, and I told him I am confident that we will be able to complete congressional action on it this week,” he told the Senate today.

The Prime Minister also raised India’s concerns with the existing versions of the two Bills. Frist said he assured Singh that the conferees were “well aware” of the India’s concerns. “I noted that I had appointed myself as a conferee in order to be able to personally participate in the process of refining the legislation, and assured him that we are working on the issues of concern to India.”

The final version of the Bill now goes for an up-and-down vote to both chambers of the Congress. This will, however, not be a time-consuming process as no amendments can now be introduced. With the Congress planning to wrap up business by Thursday, the vote may happen over the next few hours.

Once the law is in place, the US government will be enabled to enter into a historic bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with India.

US Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will be here tomorrow for talks with Indian officials, indicating that both sides are not going to waste much time in concluding the remainder of the process.