Commerce & Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has said that India will not do a deal with deadlines or with a “gun to our head” even as legal texts are being readied in areas of convergence in the ongoing India-US bilateral trade agreement (BTA) negotiations.

“We are talking to the US, but we do not do deals in a hurry and we do not do deals with deadlines or with a gun to our head,” Goyal said at the Berlin Global Dialogue in Germany on Friday.

The comments are significant as India’s purchase of Russian oil is among the sticky extraneous factors clouding the BTA negotiations. Of the 50 per cent tariffs imposed by Washington on most Indian goods, 25 per cent is a penalty for the purchase of Russian oil and is linked to India stopping its sourcing from the country. The US has continued to mou

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