Rafale issue 'exercise of vilification' and doubting Defence purchase process, Govt says

The government said that the controversy on the Rafale fighter jet deal was an "exercise of vilification and casting doubts on the Defence acquisition process", which was put to an end by the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Hours after the Supreme Court's verdict dismissing review pleas seeking probe in the case, the Defence Ministry said that the controversy left an adverse impact on the morale of security forces.

The government quoted a part of the verdict to emphasize that the review petitions -- filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan -- did not hold any merit.

"It does appear that the endeavor of the petitioners is to construe themselves as an Appellate Authority to determine each aspect of the contract and call upon the Court to do the same. We do not believe this to be jurisdiction to be exercised," an official release quoted a part of the court order.

It further quoted the court judgment to say that the court upheld and did not find any flaw in the decision-making process in defence acquisition. "We have elaborately dealt with the pleas of the learned counsel for the parties in our order dated 14.12.2018 under the heads of 'Decision Making Process', 'Pricing' and 'Offsets'," it further quoted the court.

"On pricing, the Court has upheld the position of the government that the price of the aircraft is lower than the previous deal and remarked," the press release said.

The government said that that court allowed its request for correction of an error in the December 2018 judgment which formed a major basis for the filing of the review by the petitioners.

A three-judge bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K M Joseph passed the order on a clutch of petitions seeking review of its December 14, 2018 verdict which had upheld purchase of 36 Rafale jets by the Modi government from France.