Earlier, New Delhi was planning an open house of all 144 members of the IAEA for the briefing. Sources, however, said the decision to limit the briefing to the board of governors was done with a view to focusing efforts before the agreement comes for consideration on August 1.
The board of governors is the decision-making body of the international nuclear watchdog and according to the official sources it was felt "unnecessary to brief all the members."
India had approved and circulated the draft of the agreement to the IAEA board of directors on July 8 - a day after the Left parties withdrew support to the UPA government on the issue.
However, it would be a challenging task for New Delhi to get a waiver from the Nuclear suppliers group (NSG), the elite 45-member club that must unanimously agree to allow India to trade in nuclear materials, official say.
The IAEA's board of governors also includes 26 NSG member countries.
Sources in the government said that foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon will brief the remaining 19 NSG countries at almost the same time as the briefing for the IAEA board of governors.
Critics of the India-IAEA safeguards agreement have pointed to a clause concerning unspecified "corrective action" in the draft that gives New Delhi the right to end the deal in case nuclear fuel supplies to its civil nuclear plants are disrupted.
The meeting with the NSG is likely to be held in early September.
