CJI Ranjan Gogoi cites Pentagon papers case

NEW DELHI: Writing the main judgment in the Rafale ‘secret document’ case, CJI Ranjan Gogoi adopted the US Supreme Court’s logic in its 1971 judgment. The United States SC, by a 6-3 majority, had declined to pass prohibitory orders on publication of ‘Pentagon Papers’ (by New York Times) on the ground that the legislature had vested no such power on the executive and hence the court could not introduce it.
Rejecting Venugopal’s arguments dissuading the court from considering the worth and evidentiary value of the documents because of the prohibition under the Official Secrets Act, 1923, the CJI said, “We do not see how the principle of law (in the US SC judgment) will not apply to the facts of present (Rafale) case.”

The SC said the objection raised to the petitioners placing the three secret documents, which were already published in newspapers, before the court lacked common sense as the Centre did not dispute the availability of these documents in the public domain.

“No questions have been raised and, in our considered opinion, very rightly, with regard to publication of the documents in ‘The Hindu’ newspaper. The right of such publication would seem to be in consonance with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. No law enacted by Parliament specifically barring or prohibiting the publication of such documents on any of the grounds mentioned in Article 19(2) of the Constitution has been brought to our notice,” the CJI said.

The SC said publication of Rafale documents reminded the court of its consistent views in upholding the freedom of press in a long line of decisions commencing from the Romesh Thapar judgment in 1950 to the Indian Express judgment in December 1984.