New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday asked the Centre to place before it in a sealed cover within 10 days the pricing and offset partner details finalised in the deal to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi also said that details, including the steps in the decision making process for the procurement of jets, which could "legitimately" be brought into public domain, be made available to the parties who have filed petitions before it in the matter.
After the court dictated the order, Attorney General K K Venugopal told the bench that pricing details of these jets were not even shared with Parliament, according to PTI.
The bench, which also comprised Justices U U Lalit and K M Joseph, told the Attorney General that if the pricing detail was "exclusive" and it could not be shared with the court then the Centre should file an affidavit in this regard and say so.
"If pricing is something exclusive and you are not sharing it with us, please file an affidavit and say so," the bench told Venugopal in its oral observations.
The bench made it clear that at this stage, details which might be considered to be "strategic and confidential" by the government be placed before the court and might not be given to the advocates appearing for the petitioners.
The court is hearing four petitions on the matter, including one by former ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, asking for a court-monitored CBI investigation into the Rs. 59,000 crore contract for 36 fighter jets from Dassault, a top French aeronautics company.
Shourie called the court's order a "very, very substantial step forward" in the controversy. "Confidentiality does not relate to price, only technical specifications. It will be subject to challenge. It will be difficult to say pricing is confidential," Shourie told NDTV.
The Rafale deal was announced in 2016 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's talks in Paris with then French president Francois Hollande. Hollande had in the last month while talking to local media said to chose Reliance Defence as offset partner was a condition imposed by the government of India.
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