india

Updated: Mar 06, 2019 08:46 IST

The Supreme Court will today begin hearing a petition seeking a review of its December 14, 2018, judgment in the Rafale jet purchase matter in the open court. At the same time, it will also take up the government’s application seeking certain corrections in the December 14 order.

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the matter.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had refused to order a probe on the deal to procure 36 Rafale jets from the French manufacturer Dassault Aviation at a cost of Rs 59,000 crore. It had said at that time that there was “no occasion to doubt” the Centre’s decision-making process.

The petition referred to the CAG’s audit of the deal and states that at the time of the Supreme Court’s verdict, no CAG report existed. The petition further alleges that the government misled the court into relying on a non-existent fact/report as the basis of its observation on the fighter jet’s pricing in the judgement.

The petition claimed that the information that came to the public domain after the court’s judgement proved that the government had ‘misled’ the court on various counts. It also said that the basis of the court’s judgement is “more than one untruth submitted by the government and suppression of pertinent information”.

The Congress has been relentless in its attack on the Narendra Modi government, and has accused it and businessman Anil Ambani of corruption in the deal. Both the government and Ambani have denied the allegations.

Discarding the allegations that Ambani’s inexperienced Reliance Defence was favoured over state-run aircraft maker HAL, the court said it had found no reason to interfere in the choice of offset partner.

The court had also not found any material to show commercial favouritism or that due process was not followed.