The Supreme Court has sought pricing details of the Rafale fighter jet deal with France within 10 days but agreed that the government need not disclose strategic and confidential information.

A bench of chief justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices U U Lalit and K M Joseph also asked the government to share the details that could legitimately be put into the public domain with the petitioners.  The chief justice said that court would like to be apprised of the details with regards to the pricing of costs and the advantage thereof, if any. The court also said that details about the induction of Indian offset partner also be shared with the court and thepetitioners. When the attorney general K K Venugopal argued that details pertaining to pricing and other aspects are confidential under the Officials Secret Act, the bench asked the government to file an affidavit if it feels that pricing of Rafale jet cannot be shared in sealed cover with the court.

The SC is hearing four petitions seeking a probe into the Rs 59,000 crore Rafale jet deal signed by the Modi government. One of the petitions has been filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie along with advocate Prashant Bhushan.

The bench has already gone through the decision-making process that went into the signing of the contract. The details of the process was sought by the SC in its October 10 order. Responding to the process, the bench said that at this stage it would not want to record any finding or the view on the documents placed by the government before it.
 In his petition, Prashant Bhushan had sought directions to the CBI for registration of an FIR. The petition also sought court monitored independent probe into the matter. The deal has been in controversy over the selection of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Infrastructure as offset partner of French aircraft maker Dassault. It has been alleged that Dassault Reliance Aerospace (DRAL), as the newly floated offset entity is known, got a contract of around Rs 30,000 crore as a spin-off of the deal to supply 36 Rafale jets to Indian Air Force.  The other controversy is over the price of the aircraft being purchased as the Congress has alleged that more money is being spent per fighter jet than what was negotiated by the UPA government. The Modi government had scrapped the UPA deal for the purchase of 126 aircraft and signed a fresh contract for 36 jets.