Breaking: Supreme Court to pronounce judgment in Rafale Review Petitions tomorrow

The Supreme Court will pronounce its judgment tomorrow in the Rafale Review petitions.

The judgment will be delivered tomorrow by a Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph.

The review petitions were filed against the Court’s December 2018 judgment, by which the Supreme Court had dismissed petitions calling for an investigation into the Rafale deal.

However, immediately after the judgment was pronounced, an error had come to light in the judgment. The judgment had placed on reliance on Central government’s submissions to state that details of pricing in the controversial Rafale deal were shared with the CAG and the CAG report was placed before Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee.

But the CAG report had neither been placed before the PAC nor the Parliament at the time when the case was being heard.

When the error came to light, the Central government filed a correction application seeking a correction in the judgment of the Supreme Court.

The correction application clarified that the note handed over in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court by the Union of India was misinterpreted by the Supreme Court resulting in the error by the Court.

The Centre stated that the while the pricing details were shared with the CAG, the report of the same has not yet been placed before the PAC. The application highlighted that the note in the sealed cover conveyed the normal course of procedure which would take place.

While requesting the Supreme Court to make corrections in the judgment to that effect, the Centre had stressed on the fact that the PAC will examine the CAG report, as is the procedure, after the CAG report has been prepared and submitted.

The correction application stated that the words and phrases used in the sealed cover note “has been” and “is” vis-à-vis the sharing of pricing details and submission of CAG report respectively, were misinterpreted by the Court to mean that the said processes have been completed.

The petitioners were quick to notice the mistake and filed Review petitions. The review petitions preferred by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, Prashant Bhushan and Sanjay Singh claimed that the judgment is based on “errors apparent on the face of the record” and ought to be recalled.

The Supreme Court had then proceeded to hear the review petitions in open court before reserving its verdict on May 10.

[Read the Notification]