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SC allows leaked documents

to be relied in Rafale case

Delivering a unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court has • Rafale row BJP moves Supreme Court against
Rahul Gandhi’s remarks on Rafale
dismissed the Centre’s preliminary objections seeking review of
earlier judgment giving a clean chit to the Union government in
Former union minister Arun Shou-
the Rafale deal, reports tehelka bureau rie, who is one of the review petitioners,
said he was delighted by the unani-
he Supreme Court has al- on the basis of new documents referred mous verdict.
lowed leaked documents to by petitioners. “We are delighted it is an unanimous
be relied upon by petitioners The CJI pronounced the verdict verdict dismissing Central govern-
seeking review of its Rafale on his behalf and for Justice S K Kaul. ment’s peculiar argument on admissi-
T judgement and dismissed The second concurrent judgment was bility of documents. Centre’s argument
the government’s preliminary objec- pronounced by Justice K M Joseph, meant that no wrong can be done in the
tions claiming “privilege” over them. who said he agreed with the conclusion defence deal,” Shourie said. “Our argu-
The Centre had submitted that of the judgment written by the CJI. ment was that because the documents
privilege documents were procured by The chief justice said Justice Joseph relate to defence you must examine
petitioners in an illegal way and used to agreed with the judgment delivered by them. You asked for this evidence and
support their review petitions against him but gave different reasoning. we have provided it. So the court has
the December 14, 2018 judgement of The judgment makes it clear that accepted our pleas and rejected the
the apex court dismissing all pleas during the hearing of the review peti- arguments of the government.”
challenging procurement of 36 Rafale tion the bench will look into not only The other two petitioners are former
fighter jets from France. the question of pricing of the jet but union minister Yashwant Sinha and
“We dismiss the preliminary objec- also selection of Indian offset partner activist advocate Prashant Bhushan.
tion raised by Union of India question- of Dassault which manufactures Rafale. On March 14, the apex court had
ing the maintainability of the review The top court said review petitions reserved verdict on the preliminary
petition,” a bench comprising Chief against its December 14 verdict dismiss- objections raised by the Centre on
Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K ing all petitions against procurement of admissibility of privileged documents
Kaul and K M Joseph said. Rafale jets will be decided on merits. annexed by Sinha, Shourie and Bhush-
The apex court said it will go ahead The apex court said it will fix a date an in their review petition.
with the hearing on the review petition for hearing review petitions. Classified documents were sourced

Tehelka / 30 april 2019 44 www.Tehelka.com