Supreme Court reserves order on Rafale deal petitions

After a marathon five-hour hearing, the Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its order on petitions challenging the controversial Rafale jets deal. Attorney-General KK Venugopal informed the court that the deal money shared with the Parliament of Rs 670 crore per aircraft was of the bare aircraft and not the cost of weaponry or avionics. "If the price is disclosed, our adversary can relate cost to the level of sophistication of weaponry. Also, we will be reneging on our promise of secrecy agreed with France as such details cannot be disclosed without their consent," Venugopal said. He further disclosed that instead of sovereign guarantee, the French government issued a 'Letter of Comfort' on September 25, 2015 on the deal with Dassault.

The A-G assisted by officials of Indian Air Force and Defence Ministry defended the Government over the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from French aviation supplier Dassault Aviation. The three-judge bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph grilled the Centre on questions ranging from pricing, cost escalation, sovereign guarantee, technical details and the advantages of the deal. The Court reserved the order but kept the suspense hanging on whether it will order for an investigation into the deal as demanded by the petitioners or give a clean chit to the Government ahead of a crucial election year.

The petitioners led by advocate Prashant Bhushan and former Union Minister Arun Shourie brought the request for proposal (RFP) issued on the purchase of 126 Rafale jets from the same manufacturer Dassault that later was withdrawn in June 2015. But the A-G remained firm that even in that deal, the details of weaponry and avionics was never made public.

Four Indian Air Force (IAF) officers led by Vice Chief of Air Staff Anil Khosla answered the SC's questions on advantages of the Rafale jets. The Court got insight into the current combat fleet in the country, comprising Sukhoi-30 and Light Combat Aircraft. Both are produced by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. These aircraft were largely third generation and Rafale is fourth generation jet. At present Rafale is used by Egypt, Qatar and France.

On the issue of offset partner, Additional Secretary (Defence) informed the SC that Defence Procurement Policy of 2013 was amended in 2015, retrospectively by which Dassault has time till October 2019 to give details of its Indian offset partner. The bench asked, "Later, if the Indian offset partner turns out to be incompetent or financially incapable to discharge liability, what happens to the country's interest?" The Defence Ministry official explained that the Centre reserves right to reject the offset partner suggested by Dassault and incur penalty for failure to discharge offset liability.

When the barrage of questions from the judges was about to get over, the SC allowed the IAF top officials to leave. "You may go back to your war room. It is a different war room here," the bench said.