{"id":62973,"date":"2019-04-10T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T05:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/?p=62973"},"modified":"2019-04-10T13:19:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T07:49:14","slug":"major-poll-eve-setback-for-govt-as-sc-decides-to-rely-on-leaked-documents-for-review-petitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/constitutional-law-news\/supreme-court-news\/major-poll-eve-setback-for-govt-as-sc-decides-to-rely-on-leaked-documents-for-review-petitions\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Poll Eve Setback for Govt as SC Decides to Rely on \u201cLeaked\u201d documents for Review Petitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a major setback for the Narendra Modi government<\/a>,\u00a0the Supreme Court has decided that it will rely on the rely upon the new documents to decide review petitions. All three judges were unanimous in their verdict.<\/p>\n

The Rafale episode thus gets a new lease of life and coming as it does on the eve of the first day of polling for the general elections,l it is not good news for the BJP and the prime minister and a major boost for the opposition.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0\u00a0Supreme Court had in March begun its much anticipated hearing on the petitions seeking review of its December 14 verdict which had dismissed demands for a court monitored investigation into irregularities committed by\u00a0Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s government\u00a0in negotiating the Rafale fighter jet deal<\/a> with the French government and Dassault Aviation.<\/p>\n

On march 6, as the 3 judge three-judge bench of\u00a0Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi\u00a0and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph, which had delivered the December 14 judgment, began hearing the review petitions, on Wednesday (March 6), counsel for former Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha, the most high profile petitioner in the case, \u00a0had urged the court to rap the Centre for perjury.Stating that the December 14 verdict did not go into their prayer for a court-monitored investigation into the Rafale deal but looked at prayers made by other petitioners \u2013 advocates ML Sharma and Vineet Dhanda \u2013 for cancellation of the deal, the counsel for Sinha argued that the real question before the court is whether their complaint warranted a probe.<\/p>\n

Placing reliance on a set of documents related to the Rafale deal and the negotiations between the Indian and French sides that preceded it but which came in the public domain after the December 14 verdict, Sinha\u2019s counsel said the apex court had relied upon \u201ca large number of serious errors of fact\u201d while dismissing the prayer for a probe into the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose facts were presumably supplied to the court by the Centre in sealed cover notes\u2026Critical material facts were suppressed from the court\u2026 the government should be hauled up for perjury,\u201d Sinha\u2019s counsel said.<\/p>\n

He then proceeded to place reliance on an eight page note, primarily related to matters that have come in the public domain as part of investigative news reports published by\u00a0The Hindu<\/em>\u00a0newspaper over the past two months.<\/p>\n

These reports were sourced from information gathered through files purportedly leaked from the Union defence ministry and highlighted the following details: a) contrary to the Centre\u2019s submission before the apex court, the Prime Minister\u2019s Office interfered with and possibly influenced the outcome of the negotiations with the French government on the Rafale deal even though an Indian Negotiation Team (INT) of the Union defence ministry was formed for the specific purpose, b) the Indian government waived the sovereign guarantee clause finalized during earlier negotiations between the (INT) and Dassault Aviation thereby causing a windfall gain for the fighter jet manufacturer at the cost of the Indian exchequer, c) members of the INT had objected to the interference by the PMO in the negotiation process.<\/p>\n

Further, the review petitions also place reliance on the fact that while the apex court\u2019s December 14 verdict had given a clean chit to the\u00a0Rafale deal\u00a0on grounds that it had been cleared by the Comptroller & Auditor General and that the auditor\u2019s report had been accepted by a Parliamentary panel, the C&AG report on the Rafale deal had not been finalized and presented before Parliament before February 13- i.e. two months after the top court\u2019s verdict.<\/p>\n

–India Legal Bureau<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a major setback for the Narendra Modi government,\u00a0the Supreme Court has decided that it will rely on the rely upon the new documents to decide review petitions. All three judges were unanimous in their verdict. The Rafale episode thus gets a new lease of life and coming as it does on the eve of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[64],"tags":[667,54864,20232],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/IL\/uploads\/2019\/03\/05144414\/Rafale-for-web-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}