Supreme Court considers reviewing Rafale verdict

New Delhi: The Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi on Thursday agreed to consider the plea of advocate Prashant Bhushan for early listing of a batch of review petitions filed by the Centre and others for modification of the Rafale judgment, giving a clean chit to the NDA government.

The Centre filed an application on December 15, 2018 to modify the December 14 verdict of the apex court.

Thereafter advocate Prashant Bhushan, Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha and Aam Admi party MP Sanjay Singh filed review petitions for reconsideration and all petitions are not listed for hearing though two months had passed.

On Thursday Mr Bhushan made a mention before a Bench of CJI Gogoi and Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Sanjiv Khanna for early listing of the petitions.

The CJI told the counsel “This requires constituting a bench of different composition of judges to hear all the petitions. It has to be examined. Let me see.”
There are four petitions including the government for the correction of an error in the verdict.

The Centre wants a correction in the part where the verdict states that “CAG report on the Rafale deal was placed before Parliament”, while the report was placed in Parliament only on February 13.

The Centre in its application submitted that the judgment erred in English grammar to “misinterpret” information submitted to it in a ‘sealed cover note’ about the pricing of the 36 Rafale jets’ deal.