SC TO CONSIDER EARLY LISTING OF RAFALE PLEAS

NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi said on Thursday that he would consider requests for early listing of pleas seeking a review of the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Rafale jet fighter deal. A bench led by CJI Gogoi had on December 14 dismissed a bunch of public interest petitions seeking an investigation into the ₹59,000-crore deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who was one of the petitioners in the case, mentioned the matter before the CJI, who said four applications or petitions had been filed in the Rafale case and one of them is still lying with the Supreme Court registry because it contains a defect that needs to be cured.

“The combination (of the judges) of bench will have to be changed. It is very difficult. We will do something for it,” he told Bhushan.

The lawyer informed the CJI that a review petition filed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh was defective.

He told the bench of the recent perjury prosecution application he filed along with his co-petitioners, Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha, seeking action against central government employees for allegedly misleading the court. The government, too, has filed an application seeking a clarification of the December verdict in which the court had then recorded that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had been seized of the matter.

SC had in December dismissed the petitions, saying there was “no occasion to doubt” the decision-making process of the Centre in the procurement of the 36 Rafale jets from France.

The fresh application for perjury accuses central government employees of giving false evidence. Referring to the CAG’S audit of the deal, the plea mentions that there had been no CAG report at the time of the verdict. The government misled the court into relying on a non-existent fact/report as the basis of its observation on pricing in the judgement, it alleged .

“The information that has come into the public domain after the judgement of court was delivered prima facie shows that government ‘misled’ the court on various counts and the basis of the judgement of the court is more than one untruth submitted by the government and suppression of pertinent information,” the application reads.

› The combination of bench will have to be changed. It is very difficult. We will do something for it. RANJAN GOGOI , Chief Justice of India