On the contrary! It was the French that were the first to offer us full ToT and no radar source codes in the MMRCA, next to the Russians. EF consortium and to some extend the Swedes followed only way later and it is also wrong that the operating cycle wouldn't be important. In fact, the former air chief Naik itself stated, that not the unit cost is important, but the lifecycle costs throughout the 40 years of service that IAF is planing with.
Wrt the tests of IAF, they tested the current capabilities and projected the performance of the capabilities that are also on offer, otherwise the EF couldn't be shortlisted, because it didn't fit to many requirements today. It has no AESA radar available for the trials, it had the poorest A2G or multi role capabilities of all fighters, the AESA radar will hardly be ready in time and most of the upgrades are only available on paper or prototype varients. So on the one hand we have the Rafale than can do anything IAF wants it to do even today and on the other side we have the EF, which is mainly expected to be good when all upgrades are developed and tested.