Britain's minister for international trade Liam Fox raised the issue with commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
"Their request was at least in the Vodafone case, would we not delay or expedite the arbitration, so that (the case) gets a closure," Sitharaman said and added that both the matters were sub-judice or under arbitration when the BJP-led NDA government came to power in 2014.
"We had a limitation that we could not go into dealing with those specific issues which were under arbitration. Anything which was leading towards it or around it, we tried removing it and cleansing it and making it simpler," she added.
On the issue of inking a trade pact with the UK, Sitharaman said that both India and the UK are eager to sign a free trade agreement but formal negotiations for the pact can’t happen unless the UL exits the European Union. The UK, she said, has plans to invoke Article 50 to begin the procedure to leave EU, in the first quarter of 2016-17. India is already negotiating a Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) with the EU.
