Rafale case: Petitioners file written submission in SC

Review petitioners Prashant Bhushan and others on Wednesday have filed their written submissions to the Supreme Court in the Rafale case.

This comes over a week after the Supreme Court had reserved its verdict on petitions seeking review of the December 14 Rafale case judgment which refused to order a court-monitored probe into the deal for procuring 36 fighter jets from France.

In the Rafale case, advocate Prashant Bhushan, one of the petitioners, argued that the December 14 judgment did not take note of the plea seeking an investigation in the matter and registration of a First Information Report (FIR).

He claimed that there was no precedent of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) redacting pricing details from its report regarding the deal.

"Not even in one case in the past, pricing details have been redacted. It was unprecedented that pricing details were redacted," he contended before the bench also comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph.

Bhushan also questioned as to why the standard anti-corruption clauses relating to the deal were allegedly deleted by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

"Eight standard clauses, including all standard anti-corruption clauses, were dropped from the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) post-August 24, 2016 in the Rafale deal and the same was not informed to the court," he said.

"A lot of crucial information was suppressed from this court and the impugned judgment was obtained on the basis of fraud played upon the court by the government," the lawyer said.

In his arguments, Attorney General (AG) KK Venugopal, representing the government, said,

"There is no question of any corruption. The court has already decided that in the Rafale case verdict (on December 14 last year)."

The review petitions were filed by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, Prashant Bhushan and others.In the December 14 judgement, the Supreme Court had said that there was no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the deal.