"There is no reason why it should not be concluded in June. Not much is left. It is in the last phase," Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told PTI here in an interview.
Rejecting suggestions that there has been a delay in signing the contract for nearly 7.89 Billion Euros to procure the French fighter planes, the Minister said any such process takes at least 6-8 months.
Noting that he is travelling for the next 8-10 days, the Minister said he will "see to it" that the deal is "concluded fast".
"Things have to be placed properly on the table. They (negotiating team) now have to submit a report to me on what has been discussed. After that we have to discuss it in the Cabinet. We will first sign an Inter Government Agreement. All these things take 3-4 weeks," he said.
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Soon after the announcement, the Defence Ministry scrapped a separate process that was on to purchase 126 Rafales, built by French defence giant Dassault Aviation.
The current deal comes with the clause of delivering 50 per cent offsets, creating business worth at least 3 billion Euros for smaller Indian companies and generating thousands of new jobs in India through the offsets.
In fact, the toughest phase in the negotiations that began in July was to get the French to agree to 50 per cent offsets in the deal.
The French side finally agreed to invest 50 per cent of the value following a phone conversation between Modi and French President Francois Hollande late last year.
The commercial negotiations, as in the pricing of the planes, equipment and other issues, actually began only in mid-January this year.