The Supreme Court has allowed open court hearing of petitions seeking review of its December 14 judgment verdict on the Rafale deal.

A three-judge of the top court comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice SK Kaul and Justice KM Joseph will hear the matter. The Rafale review petitions will be taken up with the government’s application seeking modification of the order. No date has been fixed for the hearing though.

The review petitions have been filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, advocate Prashant Bhushan. They have claimed that the judgment was based on “errors apparent on the face of the record” and non-consideration of subsequent information which has come to light would cause a grave miscarriage of justice. Aam Aadmi party MP Sanjay Singh has also filed a review plea.

The Supreme Court had earlier refused to order a probe on the deal to procure 36 Rafale jets from France at a cost of Rs 59,000 crore. The court had said there was “no occasion to doubt” the decision-making process of the Centre.

The fresh application for perjury accuses central government employees of giving false evidence.

Referring to the CAG’s audit of the deal, the plea mentions that there had been no CAG report at the time of the verdict. The government misled the court into relying on a non-existent fact/report as the basis of its observation on pricing in the judgement, it alleged.

The opposition Congress and its president Rahul Gandhi has been attacking the Narendra Modi government government at the Centre over the multi-crore aircraft deal accusing it or corruption.

First Published: Feb 26, 2019 18:02 IST