SC wants...

Attorney general KK Venugopal, the government’s top legal official, said several passages of the information already submitted in the court cannot be shared because they are covered under the Official Secrets Act. “Please read our order. Give whatever is possible,” CJI Gogoi told him.

The bench gave the government 10 days to comply with its order. Petitioners will have another seven days to file their responses on the information shared with them. The court will hear the matter again on November 14. Lawyers Vineet Dhanda and ML Sharma, and Aam Aadmi Party parliamentarian Sanjay Singh have challenged the deal in the court. Advocate Prashant Bhushan and former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie have demanded a courtmonitored probe by the CBI.

“Wait for this. First, let the CBI get its house in order,” CJI Gogoi said, referring to the infighting between the top two agency officials.

“The SC order wants the government to clarify on the procedure, price and how the offset partner was brought in. These were the exact three issues raised in our petitions. What more could we want?” Shourie said.

Sinha said, “All the questions that we were raising are now going to be uncovered by the SC.”

The NDA government’s decision to enter a $8.7 billion government-to-government deal with France to buy 36 Rafale warplanes made by Dassault was announced in April 2015, with an agreement signed a little over a year later. This replaced the previous UPA regime decision to buy 126 Rafale aircraft, 108 of which were to be made in India by the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). The deal has become controversial with the Opposition, led by the Congress, claiming that the price at which India is buying Rafale aircraft now is ~1,670 crore each, three times the ~526 crore, the initial bid by the company when the UPA was trying to buy the aircraft. It has also claimed the previous deal included a technology transfer agreement with HAL.

The NDA government has said it cannot disclose the details of the price on two counts – a confidentiality agreement with France, and the strategic reason of not showing its hand to India’s enemies. The NDA has said the current deal also includes customised weaponry.

The deal has also become con- troversial on account of the fact that one of the offset deals signed by Dassault is with the Reliance Group of Anil Ambani. The Congress claims the earlier deal was scrapped and a new one signed just to provide Ambani this opportunity for an offset deal. Both the government and Reliance have repeatedly denied this.

On Wednesday, the Congress reiterated its demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Rafale issue. “The most significant part of the order is on pricing of Rafale. It (the court) has asked the Centre to file an affidavit on why it claims it (pricing details) to be secret,” said senior Congress leader Manish Tewari.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala tweeted, “BJP Govt’s ‘boat of corruption’ will no longer ‘sail’, Supreme Court orders will expose the ‘truth of Rafale’.”

(With inputs from HT Correspondents)