The Rafale review petitions have been listed for hearing on Tuesday, 30 April, along with the contempt petition filed against Rahul Gandhi. The petitions will be heard by a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, along with Justices KM Joseph and Sanjay Kishan Kaul.
On Monday, the Centre requested permission from the court to submit a letter requesting an adjournment of the matter so that they could file an affidavit on it. The apex court did not pass any order on adjournment, though it has allowed the Centre to submit its request. It remains to be seen if the matter will be delayed or heard as per the schedule.
The Supreme Court’s last working day before the summer holidays begin is 10 May, so any delay in the hearing could mean it is not completed before then.
What Will be Argued in the Review Petitions?
The review petitions have been filed by several of the original petitioners in the case before the Supreme Court last year. These include advocate ML Sharma and AAP MP Sanjay Singh, although the most prominent petition is the one filed by senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, and former NDA cabinet ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie.
Their review petition makes the following arguments on why the SC’s decision on 14 December to not interfere with any aspects of the Rafale deal was incorrect:
- The judgment ignored the plea by Bhushan, Sinha and Shourie for the court to direct the CBI to register and FIR and investigate the matter. Before filing their original petition, the three of them had first filed a complaint with the CBI alleging corruption in the deal – since this disclosed a cognisable offence, they argue that the CBI was mandated to register an FIR. The 14 December verdict does not address this plea.
- The judgment contains “patent legal and factual errors”. They allege this was a result of the court accepting the government submissions made in a sealed cover. According to them, this meant the judges accepted that procedures had been broadly followed, that the CAG had submitted its report on the deal already, and even conflated the separate Reliance groups of Anil and Mukesh Ambani.
- The judgment failed to consider several material facts that raised pertinent issues, such as the fact that there was no Acceptance of Necessity for the new 36 aircraft deal (the old AON from the IAF suggested a need for 126 aircraft). The judgment also skirted over the lack of a sovereign guarantee from France despite the objections to this from the Law Ministry that the petitioners brought on record, and the increase in benchmark price from 5.2 billion euros to 8.2 billion euros.
To prove their points, the petitioners will be allowed to use ‘secret’ documents revealed in news reports by N Ram and other journalists, such as those that show the PMO conducted parallel negotiations on the sovereign guarantee issue, and anti-corruption clauses were dropped at the last minute.
The Centre had objected to the use of these documents, which they considered ‘stolen’, and Attorney General KK Venugopal had even threatened the petitioners and journalists with the Official Secrets Act.
On 10 April, however, the Supreme Court ruled in an interim order that these documents were admissible even though they were classified, and said the government’s claims of privilege were subject to public interest. The same three-judge bench had also come out strongly in favour of press freedom in their decision.
Along with the review petitions, the court is also set to hear a perjury application filed by Bhushan, Sinha and Shourie against the Centre.
What Will be Argued in the Contempt Petition?
BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi filed the contempt petition against Rahul Gandhi on 12 April, after Gandhi made a comment two days before, in which he said that “Supreme Court has accepted that there is some form of corruption in the Rafale deal and that ‘chowkidar ne chori karwayi hai’ (chowkidar PM Modi has facilitated theft).”
The court initially asked Gandhi to provide an explanation for this comment, with the CJI confirming that the court had said no such thing.
Gandhi filed an affidavit on 22 April in which he clarified that he had incorrectly attributed the statement to the court in the heat of the moment – he made the statement after being informed about the interim order on 10 April.
He expressed regret for doing so, but said he stood by his view that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was involved in corrupt practices regarding the deal. He also pointed out that a number of BJP leaders had made misleading statements about the SC’s 14 December verdict, including that it gave the government a ‘clean chit’.
When the matter came up for hearing on 23 April, Gandhi’s lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi sought to make these same points and thanked the court for not issuing notice in the matter and taking it up fully.
However, Lekhi’s lawyer, Mukul Rohatgi pressed the matter, and said it was serious. The CJI eventually decided to issue notice, and listed the contempt matter with the review petitions.
Gandhi filed a fresh affidavit on 29 April, making largely the same arguments as his previous affidavit from a week ago.
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