A Supreme Court Bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi will consider the review petitions filed in the Rafale case against the December 14 judgment in chambers at 1.45 p.m. on February 26.
The Bench, consisting also of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K.M. Joseph, will examine whether the petitions deserve to be heard in an open court.
The review petitions, filed by former Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, advocate Prashant Bhushan and Aam Aadmi party MP Sanjay Singh, allege that the court’s judgment was riddled with fault lines. They want the apex court to re-consider its “erroneous” judgment, which relies on a “non-existent” CAG report to uphold the Rafale deal.
The petitioners contend the judgment, based on a hypothetical CAG report, was not merely a “clerical or arithmetical slip” but a substantial error and want a “recall” of the verdict. The petitioners said the CAG was an independent constitutional body accountable only to Parliament.
The petitions argue that the government’s claim that the CAG’s final report on Rafale would be in a redacted form was simply untrue. In fact, the government cannot dictate to the CAG what should or should not be redacted.
The petitioners has also questioned the judgment’s dismissal of lack of sovereign guarantee from the French government’s side as a “minor deviation”.