In a setback for the government, the Supreme Court, on Wednesday, ruled that the ‘stolen’ documents were ‘admissible in the court’. A Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, dismissed Centre’s preliminary objections seeking review of earlier judgment giving a clean chit to the Union Government in Rafale deal. The bench also includes Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph.
The court allowed the admissibility of three documents in Rafale deal as evidence in re-examining the review petitions filed against the SC’s December 14 judgement in which it refused to order probe in procuring 36 Rafale fighter jets from France. “As far as the question of hearing of review plea on Rafale judgement is concerned, it will give a detailed hearing later on,” SC said.
“Our argument was that because the documents relate to Defence you must examine them. You asked for this evidence and we have provided it. So the Court has accepted our pleas and rejected the arguments of the government,” Arun Shourie, who filed review plea in Rafale deal verdict was quoted as saying by news agency.
The verdict pertains to the initial objections raised by the central government that the documents that claimed ‘privileged’ could not be authenticated to reassess the ruling on the Rafale jet deal with France.
On December 14 last year, SC had rejected the petitions by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie as also activist advocate Prashant Bhushan seeking a court-monitored probe into the Rafale acquisition process.
The Supreme Court had on March 14 heard the pleas to review the December 14 Rafale order and Attorney General KK Venugopal argued that the court should remove leaked pages from the petitions as the government claims privilege over the documents. The court, however, said that the petitioners had already submitted the documents.
The Centre, in an affidavit, had told the apex court that the review petitions were based on documents stolen from the Defence Ministry.
The matter comes on the backdrop that the Congress-led opposition has made Rafale an election issue and targetted the government over the offset contracts awarded to the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Defence by Dassault – the manufacturer of Rafale.
In its December 14 verdict, the apex court had dismissed the petitions and said that there was no reason to ‘really doubt the decision-making process’.
In 2016, India and France had inked an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) to purchase 36 Rafale fighters from French Dassault. The announcement, made by PM Modi during his France visit, overruled the then existing process to purchase 126 Rafale jets from France — 18 in flyaway condition and 108 to be made in India with the transfer of technology.
Agencies
