Whether we need aircraft that can combat F16s is irrelevant to whether the procedure was violated, and even if the Official Secrets Act has been violated, this only means the government can file criminal cases against the accused, not that their review petition should be dismissed. There is no danger of delaying the deal because of these objections because the court had already said they would not try to stop it, and this was not being asked for by the petitioners.

Venugopal also insisted that the petitioners would have to disclose who the source was which had provided the documents. Again, this is a bad look given he had already admitted the documents are genuine. The source would only matter if the information was fake, and there was a chance someone was fabricating information.

All in all, it looked like the government was intent on fighting all the wrong battles instead of countering the actual issues. It also meant that the A-G barely got around to making his argument on these documents being privileged under section 123 of the Evidence Act, which was actually much stronger.