SC To Hear Rafale Review Petitions In CJI's Chamber On 26th February

The chamber hearing is scheduled at 1:45pm on Tuesday. The bench will also consider whether to give open court hearing in the matter. The review petition filed by AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh is also listed along with it.

The former cabinet ministers Sinha and Shourie along with Advocate Prashant Bhushan, in their petitions have claimed that the December 14 judgment contains "patent factual and legal errors".

On December 14 last year, the apex court had dismissed a clutch of Public Interest Litigations, observing that there was "no occasion to doubt" the decision-making process of the Centre in the procurement of 36 Rafale jets from France.

The following are some of the main grounds on which the review is sought.

• The prayer of the petitioners for registration of FIR and investigation by CBI was not dealt with and instead the contract was reviewed prematurely without the benefit of any investigation or inquiry into disputed questions of facts.
• The government has blatantly misled the Hon'ble Court and the Hon'ble Court has grossly erred in placing reliance on false averments in the note not even supported by an affidavit. The entire judgement is based on disputed questions of facts in respect of which an investigation needs to be done. As the judgement is based on evidently false averments in the note not shared with the petitioners, on that ground alone the entire judgement ought to be not just reviewed but recalled.
• The judgment did not consider material facts that raise pertinent issues such as: absence of sovereign guarantee by France in the Inter-Government Agreement even though Defence Procurement Procedures prescribed it, objections in Indian Negotiating Team (INT) to increase the benchmark price from 5.2 billion to 8.2 billion euros, and selection of Mr. Ambani's RAL as an offset partner.