Shadows of Rafale

 After the Supreme Court shot down the petitions for ordering a court monitored probe on the Rafale deal on December 14, the government got away from being corralled in the dock mainly because the Court saw no wrongdoing in the procedure since it was led to believe that the CAG report was tabled in parliament and also discussed by the PAC. The opposition cried foul and accused the Modi government of having misled the Supreme Court that the CAG report was tabled in parliament and also discussed in the PAC. The government has now claimed that the Supreme Court had misread or misinterpreted the contents of the deal submitted by the government in a sealed envelope. The BJP lost no time in demanding that Rahul Gandhi apologise making allegations against prime minister Narendra Modi for wrong doing. Of course, the BJP also did not lose the opportunity to question the nationalism of the Congress party for debating a security-related matter in public domain. The Supreme Court judgment was a blow to the Congress which BJP lost no opportunity in exploiting it to the hilt after its disastrous political setbacks in the recent assembly elections where it lost all three important Hindi belt states- Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan- to the Congress. The Supreme Court ruling came as a face saver for the BJP after Christian Michel, who was extradited from Dubia just on the eve of the recent polls by CBI to expose the Gandhis, did not toe the line. A day after the Supreme Court verdict on the Rafale deal, Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the CLP in Parliament , accused the government of “misleading” the Supreme Court by presenting wrong facts about the CAG report on the Rafale deal and demanded an apology from the government for it. The Modi government was accused of having misled the Supreme Court that the CAG report was tabled in parliament and also discussed in the PAC. The government has now claimed that the Supreme Court misread or misinterpreted the contents of the deal submitted by the government in a sealed envelope. According to an official source, the Government of India has filed the application to correct the statement in the Rafale judgment. The source said that the court’s statement was based on the sealed cover note in which certain points were set out. The government claimed that the court misinterpreted that the CAG report ‘has been placed’ – instead of saying ‘is to be placed’ – before the PAC.” The Congress parliamentary party leader Mallikarjun Kharge who is chairman of the Public Accounts Committee(PAC) cited the Supreme Court judgment, which claimed that the CAG report on Rafale pricing had been tabled in Parliament and discussed in PAC. Kharge challenged the government by demanding to know as to when has the CAG discussed the PAC report? He reiterated that the report has not been tabled so far and so a wrong information was fed by the government to the Supreme Court. He said “ it is a matter of shock…government should apologise for misleading the Supreme Court by presenting wrong facts on CAG report before the Court.” He reiterated that only a joint parliamentary committee can investigate the alleged corruption in the Rafale deal. Perhaps only a probe by JPC will be logically, legally and constitutionally tenable.