Supreme Court Refuses To Entertain PIL Seeking Fresh Probe Into Rafale Deal

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a PIL seeking a fresh probe into the deal between India and France for the procurement of 36 Rafale jets.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and S Ravindra Bhat considered lawyer M L Sharma’s submission that a direction for issuing a letters rogatory to collect fresh evidence relating to the deal be issued. He also referred to some media reports alleging that one billion Euros were paid by Dassault Aviation to a middleman to get the deal in its favour.

In his petition, Sharma had requested the court to issue "appropriate writ direction for cancelling/quashing agreement of September 23, 2016 for the purchase of 36 Rafale jet fighters from Dassault France for being hit by fraud, corruption, and offence under the Official Secrets Act and to recover entire advanced money with penalty and to blacklist Dassault".

"The September 2016 deal was signed by the defence ministers of India and France and called 'Rafale deal', in which India would pay about Rs 58,000 crore or €7.8 billion for 36 off-the-shelf Dassault Rafale twin-engine fighters couple with 15% advance payment of this cost. As per the deal, India will also get spares and weaponry, including the Meteor missile, considered one of the most advanced in the world," the petition said.

Sharma, who made Prime Minister Narendra Modi the first respondent, had also demanded that the first four respondents named in his petition be prosecuted. However, during the hearing today, the bench refused to consider the fresh PIL and allowed Sharma to withdraw it.

"Having gone through the facts and circumstances, in our view, no case is made out to exercise jurisdiction of this court under Article. Petition dismissed," the apex court said in its order.

On December 14, 2018, the apex court had dismissed a batch of PILs challenging the deal between India and France for the procurement of 36 Rafale jets, saying there was no occasion to “really doubt the decision making process”.

When Sharma told the court that he would approach the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), CJI Lalit said nobody was stopping him.

In 2018, the apex court had warned Sharma against filing frivolous PILs after he named then finance minister Arun Jaitley in a petition, accusing him of plundering the capital reserve of the Reserve Bank of India. The court had also imposed a penalty of Rs 50,000 on advocate Sharma.