The Supreme Court on Friday posed searching questions to the Centre on its deal with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets on issues like the \u201cwaiver of sovereign guarantee\u201d and the absence of technology transfer clause in the IGA pact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The top court reserved its verdict on \npleas, including the one filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha,\n Arun Shourie and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, seeking review of \nits December 14 judgment which gave clean chit to the Centre\u2019s Rafale \ndeal to procure jets from the French firm, Dassault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Bench \nheaded by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi referred to a judgment in the \nLalita Kumari case which said that an FIR is must when information \nrevealed commission of cognizable offence. \u201cThe question is whether you \nare obliged to follow the Lalita Kumari judgment or not.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attorney\n General K K Venugopal told the Bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul\n and K M Joseph, that \u201cthere has to be a prima facie case, otherwise \nthey cannot proceed. The information must disclose commission of \ncognizable offence\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the court\u2019s question of waiver of \nsovereign guarantee by France in the IGA and its replacement with a \nletter of comfort, Venugopal said it was not an \u201cunprecedented practice\u201d\n and referred to such agreements with Russia and the US where there was \nsuch a waiver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is a question of national security. No other \ncourt in the world will examine a defence deal on these kinds of \narguments\u201d, he said.The Bench was hearing three review petitions filed \nby the trio, a lawyer Vineet Dhandha and AAP lawmaker Sanjay Singh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n apex court had said in the December verdict that there was no occasion \nto doubt the decision-making process in the procurement of 36 Rafale \nfighter jets and dismissed the petitions seeking an investigation into \nalleged irregularities in the Rs 58,000 crore deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow did the \ngovernment anticipate even before the CAG report came that the pricing \ndetails of Rafale will be redacted? In a report submitted in November \n2018, how did they know that the CAG report in February next year would \nredact pricing details?\u201d the lawyer asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bhushan alleged \nsuppression of material facts from the court by the Centre and said that\n as many eight critical clauses of the standard defence procurement \nprocedure were dropped in the deal in the meeting of Cabinet Committee \non Security in September 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the outset, Bhushan submitted \nthat the judgment did not deal with the prayer seeking probe into the \ndeal and decided the petition on the premise that it was seeking \ncancellation of IGA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the Centre misled the court by \nreferring to non-existent CAG report in November, 2018 hearing when it \nis on record that the report came later in February this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One\n of the clauses dealt with the aspect that the government can cancel the\n deal if the information of any involvement of middleman comes to the \nlight, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is shocking that the \ngovernment concealed this piece of information from the court. Doing \naway with the anti-Corruption clauses and concealment of this fact from \nthe court is by itself a sufficient ground to order a criminal \ninvestigation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe bench-mark price was firm and \nfixed. It was 5 billion Euros. But the final price for Rafale jets shot \nup to 55.6 per cent above the bench-mark price and would continue to \nincrease with time,\u201d he alleged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnil Ambani was involved in \nthis deal right from the beginning\u201d and he even produced a film for the \nwife of a French leader, he said, alleging \u201cquid pro quo\u201d which required\n criminal investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shourie also addressed the bench on a \nseparate plea seeking perjury prosecution of unknown government \nofficials for misleading it during the hearing of the pleas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Venugopal\n vehemently opposed the submissions and sought dismissals of the review \npetitions saying that the basic grounds of these pleas were the same as \nin the main case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Supreme Court has already decided the \nchallenge to the Rafale deal. I would still say that the petitioners are\n seeking review of the judgment on the basis of secret stolen \ndocuments,\u201d he said.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Supreme Court on Friday posed searching questions to the Centre on its deal with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets on issues like the \u201cwaiver of sovereign guarantee\u201d and the absence of technology transfer clause in the IGA pact. The top court reserved its verdict on pleas, including the one filed by former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61037,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61035\/revisions\/61037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}