The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed review petitions against its 2018 order on the Rafale deal, saying the review petitions were found to be without merit and upholding the Rafale jets deal.
Reports said the court also closed the defamation case against Rahul Gandhi. The court said, “Rahul needs to be more careful in the future.”
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The top court was hearing petitions seeking a review of its judgment giving a clean chit to the Centre in the Rafale deal.
On 14 December, 2018, the apex court had dismissed all petitions seeking a court-monitored probe in the Rafale deal and said there was no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the procurement of 36 Rafale jets from France.
The court had reserved the decision on the pleas, including one filed by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, on 10 May. Two other review petitions have been filed by Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh and advocate Vineet Dhanda.
The Centre had claimed that the documents cited in the pleas were “stolen from the Defence ministry” and sought the dismissal of the review petition. The Supreme Court, however, dismissed the government’s preliminary objections claiming “privilege” over them.
It had noted that all the three documents were in “public domain”. The Hindu, a Business Standard report quoted the bench as saying, had the right to publish those documents as the “right of such publication would seem to be in consonance with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech”.
(With PTI inputs)