COURT SATISFIED
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a clutch of petitions demanding a court-monitored investigation of the Rafale jet fighter deal, saying it saw no reason to doubt the process followed in the ₹59,000 crore purchase, effectively vindicating the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s stand that there is nothing wrong in the deal and that due process was followed.
The court refused to go into the issue of the deal’s pricing.
In the political realm, as the NDA demanded an apology from Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who has been relentless in insisting that there has been wrongdoing in the deal, the opposition party refused to accept the government’s claim of vindication and mounted pressure for a probe by a joint parliamentary committee (JPC).
Protests and slogan-chanting by both the ruling party and opposition members forced an early adjournment of both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha even as finance minister Arun Jaitley demanded that the Congress party immediately start a discussion on the Rafale deal in the Upper House.
The Supreme Court ruling came as a shot in the arm for the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the heels of reverses suffered by it in the latest round of state elections, in which it lost control of the key heartland states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Although the Congress repeatedly referred to Rafale in its campaign, political analysts aren’t sure it played a part in elections which were largely decided by rural distress and anti-incumbency.
The bench said it saw no evidence of commercial favouritism in the deal, was satisfied that due process had been followed, and the need for procuring the air-
craft was not in doubt . On the pricing of the aircraft, which is at the heart of the controversy, it observed that it wasn’t the job of the court to compare pricing details.
“It is not correct for the court to sit as an appellate authority in the aircraft purchase,” a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, and justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph unanimously ruled.
They dismissed four petitions demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe . CONTINUED ON P 9 ››FULL COVERAGE, P7