Allow Cookies!
By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies
The Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on the petition seeking the review of the Rafale Deal. Along with this, an application seeking the perjury proceedings was also considered by the Court. The Court also reserved its verdict over the contempt petition filed by Meenakshi Lekhi.
The argument put forward by counsel Prashant Bhusan were that there were two grounds for review. Firstly,that the December 14 judgment proceeded on the wrong basis that the petitioners were seeking cancellation of the deal, failing to consider that the petitioners were actually praying for a court monitored probe into the corruption in it. Secondly, that the judgment is based on incorrect and incomplete facts supplied by the Government. He stated that the dropping of the anti-corruption clause from the agreement itself is a ground for intitating a criminal investigstion.Also the government is silent on the same. Also, the government had not supplied the full information regarding the process and there was a dissent among three of the seven members of the INT. There was an increase in the final deal, being 55.6 % above the benchmark. Along with this, the ‘parallel negotiation", which weakened India's bargaining power considerably was also an issue.
On the question of the waivering of the sovereign guarantee, the AG stated that it was not an uncommon practice and could be seen in intergovernmental agreements with Russia and the USA.
The second aspect to be discussed is the contempt plea against Rahul Gandhi. The counsel Mukhl Rohatgi contended that the apology given by the Congress Party was not genuine.
Lastly, the issue of the review petition, in which the evidence in the form of the newspaper reports of the Hindi were produced which questioned the deal and the matters associated with that. The argument of the government was that the entire negotiations were handled by the Indian Negotiating Team is discredited by the revelation made by The Hindu that Prime Minister's Office held "parallel negotiations". The reports of the INT are based on incomplete facts. The Centre had objected to the documents, claiming these were privileged documents. However, the Supreme Court overruled these arguments with respect to the Official Secrets Act. The Centre also filed an affidavit saying that the Prime Minister’s action of monitoring the process cannot be called as parallel negotiations.
A perjury application was filed by the Petitioners seeking criminal prosecution against those who were misleading the Court.The Defence Ministry has filed an affidavit stating that the application is "misconceived" and is based on incomplete file notings and selective media leaks, which cannot be said to be wholly authentic. Also the non-existing of the report of the CAG with regard to the pricing details also led to a huge controversy. Subsequently, the Government filed "correction application" on the following day of judgment, stating that the references to the CAG report were based on misinterpretation of grammatical tenses.
86540
103860
630
114
59824