Jaitley rules out Rafale JPC, asks if politicians fit to review SC verdicts

The Court’s verdict is final... On areas such as procedure, offset suppliers and pricing, can a Parliamentary Committee take a different view of what the Court has said?

ARUN JAITLEY, Finance minister

NEWDELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday asked how a parliamentary committee can go into the correctness or otherwise of what the court has said, in response to a demand by the Congress for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe the purchase of 36 Rafale jets from France.

Jaitley also hinted that defence suppliers who lost out on the deal may be behind the controversy surrounding it. “Is a Committee of Politicians both legally and in terms of human resources capable of reviewing issues already decided by the Supreme Court?” Jaitley wrote in an article shared on social media sites.

“The need for such a weapon cannot be overstated. When such defence equipments are purchased obviously some suppliers loose out (sic). The suppliers are clever people. They understand who the “vulnerables” in India are,” he added in the article titled “Rafale – Lies, Shortlived lies and now further lies.”

Jaitley’s post comes two days after the Supreme Court disists” missed pleas to probe the deal, saying there was no reason to doubt the decision-making process. The could also said that it would not go into pricing details.

Jaitley said the court conducts a judicial review, it is a non-partisan, independent and a fair constitutional authority. “The Court’s verdict is final. It can’t be reviewed by anyone except by the Court itself,” he argued.

“On areas such as procedure, offset suppliers and pricing, can a Parliamentary Committee take a different view of what the Court has said?” Jaitley asked. “Can the contract be breached, nation’s security be compromised and the pricing data be made available to Parliament / its Committee so that national interest is severely compromised with?”

Jaitley contended that lies spoken on the Rafale deal have been exposed. “Every word said against the Government has proved to be false. Every “fact” stated by the vested interests against the deal has proved to be manufactured. Truth has once again established its primacy. The creators of falsehood will still persist with falsehood even at the cost of their own credibility. Only their captive constituencies will clap,” he wrote in the article.

Jaitley dismissed Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s objections to the deal as a “desperate attempt” that was getting instant support from “career national- of Lutyens’ Delhi and “permanent PIL petitioners” .

“They are willing to cooperate with any one who hurts India. A new job creation has taken place in Delhi with the “loud mouths on hire” and “subject experts” notwithstanding their conflict of interest. The disruptionists alliance was, therefore, quite wide,” Jaitley wrote.

Congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan said Jaitley was glorifying “perjury”, adding that truth had its own way of catching up at an inconvenient time.

After the court’s ruling on the Rafale deal, a row erupted as the order contained some errors, the most significant one being its mention that the pricing details had been shared with the Comptroller and Auditor general of India, or CAG, that the government auditor had submitted a report to the Public Accounts Committee, and that redacted portions of the report were available in the public domain. Some of the petitioners and opposition parties said the government had, in its original submission to the court, misled it. The government filed an application on Saturday for a correction.