New Delhi: The Narendra Modi-government on Wednesday questioned the prospect of the Supreme Court (SC) reviewing the 7.87 billion euro (Dh32.6 billion) deal with French firm Dassault for purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets, saying that only experts can undertake the exercise.
“Is the court competent to judicially review this? The matter is for experts to decide on, not the court,” Attorney General (AG) K K Venugopal said before the court.
He said the information asked by the court was protected under the secrecy clause of the deal.
“The Rafale issue is only for the experts to deal with. We have been saying that even Parliament has not been told about details such as the complete cost of jets, etc. The information cannot be disclosed even under the Right to Information Act,” Venugopal added.
The government claimed that the delay in concluding the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) deal, during the rule of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, gave India’s adversaries time to upgrade their fighter fleets.
“During this long period of inconclusive 126 MMRCA process, our adversaries inducted modern aircraft and upgraded their older versions. They acquired better capability air-to-air missiles and inducted their indigenous fighters in large numbers. Further, they modernised and inducted aircraft with advanced weapon and radar capabilities,” the AG said.
The court then decided to reserve its order on a batch of petitions seeking a court-monitored probe into the deal.
The petitioners in the case include lawyers Vineet Dhanda and Manohar Lal Sharma, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh, former union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
On the price of the aircraft, Bhushan said the government was hiding behind the secrecy clause of the agreement. “It was disclosed in Parliament twice. The government is now saying what was stated in Parliament is the basic price. The government is hiding behind the secrecy agreement,” he said.
In response to that, Venugopal said “the secrecy agreement has to be secret. If the price is made public, the adversaries would be able to relate it to the equipment.”
The three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, said since it was dealing with the requirements of the Indian Air Force (IAF), it would like to ask an Air Force officer about Rafale jets.
“On the next date, we want to hear from an Air force officer and not the officials of the Defence Ministry on the issue,” the court observed.
Valid questions
Reacting to the observations of the top court, legal expert Vivek Saksena said the offset contract, which runs concurrently with the main contract, cannot be separated. “The main allegation by the petitioners is that the government lied that it had no role in the offset clause of the deal. How can Dassault choose Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as an offset partner despite its inexperience in the field. These are valid questions and deserve examination,” Saksena told Gulf News.
Lawyer-activist Rajeev Ranjan said the government’s justification for the new deal, with a change in offset guidelines, was the central point of debate.
“Former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had admitted that the new deal was because of fresh political developments between India and France. The new deal was not because there was something drastically wrong with the earlier one negotiated by Congress. Also how can revealing pricing of the aircraft compromise national security?” Ranjan told Gulf News.
The government had on Monday handed over two sets of documents, in a sealed cover to the court containing details of the pricing of the fighter aircraft, and process of decision-making leading to award of the contract.
On Wednesday, the court asked the petitioners to respond to the contents of the documents in which it has been stated by the government that the deal was negotiated on “better terms” than it was at the time of UPA.
