NEW DELHI: The Centre faced some anxious moments in the Supreme Court defending the Rafale deal but CJI Ranjan Gogoi on three occasions bailed out attorney general K K Venugopal, who was finding it cumbersome to explain technical details.

Justice K M Joseph referred to the Centre’s note on decision making process, which claimed that the UPA-drafted Defence Procurement Policy of 2013 was fully complied with, and asked: “The Request for Proposal for 126 Rafale jets were withdrawan in June 2015. This means, the RFP for 126 jets was pending when the PM on April 2015 announced the new deal for 36 fly-away Rafale jets. How could the PM announce the new deal without withdrawing the pending RFP?”

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When the AG was shuffling through papers and was seeking assistance from advocate Col R Balasubramanian and solicitor general Tushar Mehta, it was CJI Gogoi who said: “Your answer is in the note itself AG. Read paragraph 18 of the note which says the process for withdrawal of the RFP was initiated in March 2015.”

After Prashant Bhushan and Arun Shourie argued about the alleged arbitrary retrospective change in the DPP to facilitate induction of Indian offset partners to help Anil Ambani ’s Reliance Defence, Justice Joseph again asked: “You (AG) are not explaining how IOP was selected. The procedure says IOP can be inducted only with the approval of the defence minister. This had to be incorporated in the main agreement.”

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When AG argued that it was done through an amendment and the additional defence secretary Apurva Chandra explained that the amendments were carried out on the basis of suggestions of a committee appointed during the UPA regime, CJI Gogoi said, “AG, long and short of your argument is that amendment to one of the main clause in DPP on IOP would subsume other unamended clauses which required approval of defence minister on IOP induction.”

Justice Joseph then asked that if the government had withdrawn RFP for 126 Rafale jets and entered into a new contract for 36 fly-away Rafale aircraft, was there not a requirement for floating a new RFP as the deal was different from the original one?

The AG was again looking for instructions on the issue from the law officers and additional defence secretary. The CJI again came to the rescue and said “it is your (the Centre’s) stand that inter-governmental agreements do not require RFP.”

