Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been stripped naked of his lies and truth has prevailed about the Rafale deal, the Congress party claimed on Wednesday.
The party lauded the Supreme Court for dismissing the Centre's preliminary objections claiming 'privilege' over three Rafale documents cited in petitions seeking review of December 14 verdict on the fighter jet deal.
"Today is a great day for fearless journalism. Today is a great day for showing the mirror of truth to the power... Prime Minister Modi wanted to hide behind the Official Secrets Act, he has been stripped naked of his lies and truth has prevailed," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told media here.
"The layers of corruption in the Rafale scam are now out in the open. The entire structure of lies built by Prime Minister Narendra Modi lies shattered in tatters. Prime Minister Modi used to hide behind a self-pronounced clean chit by the Supreme Court," he said.
"But today Supreme Court has demolished that lie. To hide the lies of Rafale Prime Minister Modi spoke 100 lies. But the truth has finally caught up with him. The truth is that 'Rafale Ki Chori Main Chowkidar Chor Hai," he said.
In a unanimous judgement, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi on Wednesday allowed the admissibility of the three documents and said that the review pleas will be heard on merits.
"We deem it proper to dismiss preliminary objections and hold and affirm the review petitions will be adjudicated on the basis of relevance of the three documents whose admissibility was questioned by respondents," Justice Gogoi said.
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The bench said that the date of hearing the review pleas will be decided later.
"The evidentiary value is that there is blatant theft, a blatant violation of procedure, blatant corruption and compromising national interest in the entire Rafale deal... Today, the Supreme Court has taken the first step in the justice towards Rafale and a Joint Parliamentary Committee would be the final step," he said.
"Justice has prevailed. 'Chowkidar' and his friends will get punished now," he said.
The review petitions were filed against the apex court's December 14 judgment refusing to order a probe into the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.
Arun Shourie, who is among the petitioners seeking review of the Rafale verdict, said: "Our argument was that because the documents relate to defence, you must examine them. You asked for the evidence and we have provided it. So the court has accepted our pleas and rejected the arguments of the government."
The Centre had claimed "privilege" over the Rafale documents and their admissibility as evidence in the case.
The bench had said that it will take a decision first on the preliminary objections of the Centre on the admissibility of "stolen" privileged documents annexed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan in their review petition against the apex court's December 14 verdict.
The documents have already been published in the media. The Centre had also claimed that the documents were "unauthorisedly accessed" from the originals kept in the Ministry of Defence and leaked into the public domain.
The Central government had contended that the documents were protected under the Official Secrets Act and their disclosure was exempted under the Right to Information Act as per Section 8(1) (a). However, the Supreme Court had said that Section 22 of the RTI Act gave an overriding effect over the Official Secrets Act.
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