Centre should respond to Rafale review petition by Saturday: SC

Guwahati: The Supreme Court today asked the Centre to respond to the Rafale case review petition by Saturday and the court will hear the matter on Monday.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said that it would not allow the plea of the Centre that it should be granted four weeks time to file its response to the pleas.

The Supreme Court has been asked to put off the Rafale review hearing by the government saying that it needs more time to file its affidavit.

Earlier, the Supreme Court rejected the government’s counter on the admissibility of some documents used by the petitioners. In December last, the petitioners were seeking a review of the court’s verdict rejecting a court-ordered probe into the deal to buy Rafale fighter jets.

The top court judgement had rejected the argument that the documents should not be considered during the hearing because these were sensitive in nature and had been obtained through unauthorized photocopying and leakage.

The petition was filed by former union ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan seeking review of the December 14, 2018 verdict of the apex court giving clean chit to the Rafale deal.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh has also filed a separate review petition in the case.

However, in his earlier explanation, Gandhi said that if he had misinterpreted the court’s order on the review petition, then many ministers of the government who passed off the order in the original case given on December 14, 2018 as a clean chit to the deal have also misinterpreted the court’s order.

The Congress President has filed an affidavit last week to explain his first reaction to the April 10 court ruling on use of leaked defence ministry documents for the Rafale review petition to which Gandhi had remarked saying that the court had said “Chowkidar Chor Hai” repeating a slogan that Gandhi and the Congress have used to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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