Indian negotiators will travel to Washington next week to finalise the legal agreement around the just-concluded Indo-US trade deal.Darpan Jain, India’s chief negotiator, will lead the delegation. Top Commerce Ministry sources today said efforts were underway to sign the legal agreement by March but “no firm deadlines can be attributed to the same as the process involves several intricacies that both sides need to resolve”.Importantly, the ministry has clarified that digital trade and services were not on the table between the two nations during the negotiations for the interim trade deal which has been announced.“This segment will only come up at a later stage when the Bilateral Trade Agreement is negotiated,” a top official said.Apart from this, officials also said that Indian stakeholders needed to review the fact sheet which the Centre had put out on the deal and its nuances. Responding to the ongoing Congress criticism that India had given away a lot in the deal, a senior official source said, “We should study the Indian fact sheet. Nuances of the deal will be clear once the legal agreement is signed and details of every tariff line listed. Why jump the gun? Also, the US fact sheet was amended because they realised they had made a mistake by mentioning something that was not part of the talks.”Israel FTA not until next few monthsTerms of reference for the Indo-Israel FTA have been signed and negotiations are on but officials said they did not see an outcome in terms of the FTA in the next few months.India, UK eye April operationalisationBoth sides are working to operationalise the FTA as soon as possible. The effort is to operationalise by April but firm deadlines cannot be fixed.In talks with Canada on terms of referenceTeams are engaged with Canada to finalise terms of reference for FTA, say officials.The official reference was to the US deletion of the mention that India would lower or eliminate tariffs on certain pulses as part of the deal and that it had committed to buy $500 billion worth of products in five years. The latter was changed to “intends to buy”.“A joint statement has been agreed and put in the public domain. The contours of the deal have to be now translated into a legal document. Both sides are engaged in finalising the legal document. Virtual engagements are going on, and next week, chief negotiator Darpan Jain will lead a delegation to the US to finalise the legal element,” top ministry sources said.They added that this work would carry on in Washington and in India in March, if need be. “The effort is to finalise the legal agreement by March 2026. But we will still not put a firm deadline to it because the legal document has certain intricacies which both sides will need to resolve,” said the source.On the question as to when the reciprocal tariff would be lowered to 18 per cent after the punitive 25 per cent tariff had been dropped, top officials said, “The 25 per cent tariff has already gone and the 25 to 18 per cent journey is being processed. Our expectation is it should be done this week but in case it is not, our team will be there in the US next week and can pursue why it is taking time,” the source said.The official said the agreement was to lower the reciprocal tariff from 25 to 18 per cent in the interim. For the remaining lines where the reciprocal tariff was to go down to zero, it would be done only after the legal agreement was signed.“Even from our end, any reduction in tariffs and any preferential market access will be done only after the legal agreement is signed. Line-wise clarity on items will be available once the legal agreement is signed,” the source said.