Current Affairs
The Supreme Court will pronounce the verdict on the preliminary objections raised by the Centre that the documents on which it was claiming "privilege" cannot be relied upon to re-examine the verdict in the Rafale fighter jet deal with France.A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi will pronounce the verdict.
On March 14, the apex court had reserved verdict on the preliminary objections raised by the Centre on admissibility of privileged documents annexed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie as also activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan in their review petition against the top court's December 14 judgement that dismissed all petitions against the Rafale jet deal.
"Only after we decide the preliminary objection raised by the Centre, we will go into other aspect of the review petitions," the bench said, adding that "only if we overrule the preliminary objection, we will go into other details".
The Centre had claimed privilege over documents pertaining to the Rafale fighter jet deal with France and said those documents cannot be considered in evidence as per Section 123 of the Indian Evidence Act.
Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre had contended that no one can produce them in the court without the permission of the department concerned as those documents are also protected under the Official Secrets Act and their disclosure is exempted under the Right to Information Act as per Section 8(1)(a).
Bhushan had contended that the Centre's objections were "mala fide and totally untenable arguments".The top court had further noted that according to the AG's submissions "there are three Rafale documents whose publication comes under Official Secrets Act, 1923...Read More
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