New Delhi: Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and advocate Prashan Bhushan, who were among the petitioners before the Supreme Court, issued a statement saying the SC judgement was “shocking as it is disappointing”.
They said that they were disappointed that the court has taken a “conservative view” of judicial review in cases of defence deal corruption involving high functionaries and were shocked that the judgment was based on completely false information about the CAG report.
“No CAG report on Rafale has been submitted or examined,” the statement said.
They also expressed shock over the court’s acceptance of Mukesh Ambani’s RIL being a “parent company” of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence. “The scandal will continue to agitate the public mind – new disclosures are expected soon,” they said.
Mr Sinha, Mr Shourie and Mr Bhushan had challenged the pricing details of 36 fighter jets on the ground that there were huge escalations in costs, as per the materials available in the public domain. They had sought a direction to the CBI to register an FIR for alleged irregularities in the deal.
“The court’s judgement does not even address the documented facts stated in our petition or even deal with our main prayer seeking an investigation. On the contrary it proceeds on the basis that we were challenging the contract itself and uses the facts stated by the government either in the short open affidavit filed or perhaps facts claimed in the sealed cover handed only to the court which was never shared with us. In fact some of the facts mentioned in the court judgement are not only not on record but are patently incorrect,” they said in a statement.
