Rafale: Apex court allows use of 'leaked' documents

New Delhi: In a setback to the Centre, the Supreme Court Wednesday allowed leaked documents to be relied upon by petitioners seeking review of its Rafale judgement and dismissed the government's preliminary objections claiming "privilege" over them.

The Centre had submitted that privileged documents were illegally procured by petitioners and used to support their review petitions against the December 14, 2018 judgement of the apex court dismissing all pleas challenging procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.

"We dismiss the preliminary objection raised by Union of India questioning the maintainability of the review petition," a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph said.

The apex court said it would go ahead with the hearing on the review petition based on new documents referred by petitioners.

The CJI pronounced the verdict on his behalf and for Justice S K Kaul. The second concurrent judgment was pronounced by Justice K M Joseph, who said he agreed with the conclusion of the judgment written by the CJI.

The chief justice said Justice Joseph agreed with the judgment delivered by him but gave different reasoning.

The judgment makes it clear that during the hearing of the review petition the bench will look into not only the question of pricing of the jet but also the selection of Indian offset partner of Dassault which manufactures Rafale.

The top court said review petitions against its December 14 verdict dismissing all petitions against procurement of Rafale jets would be decided on merits.

The apex court said it would fix a date for hearing review petitions.

Opposition parties Wednesday hailed the Supreme Court's decision allowing leaked documents to be relied upon by petitioners seeking review of its Rafale judgement, saying the Modi government now has "no official secrets act" to hide behind and a probe into the "scam" will take place.

The petitioners in the Rafale deal case are using certain documents to present a selective and incomplete picture of secret internal deliberations relating to national security, the Defence Ministry said, in its reaction to the Supreme Court's order on the contentious issue.

On March 14, the apex court had reserved verdict on the preliminary objections raised by the Centre on the admissibility of privileged documents annexed by Sinha, Shourie and Bhushan in their review petition.

The media sourced classified documents over the Rafale deal. Citing internal reports of the Defence Ministry, The Hindu had reported that the Defence Ministry had objected to parallel negotiations. See P5