New Delhi: On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued a formal notice to the Central government on the review petitions that had been filed against its December 14 judgement on the Rafale deal issue. Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, has sought a time of four weeks to file a reply on the matter. The top court has directed the Centre to file its reply by May 4 and the matter will next be taken up for hearing on May 6. On Monday, the Centre had asked the court to defer today’s hearing on the review pleas. The Centre had stated that it requires more time to file a detailed reply in the matter.

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Here it is to be noted that today’s notice was issued by a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and also comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna. The review petitions have been filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan. Two separate review petitions were filed by Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh and advocate Vineet Dhanda. In a letter in which it sought adjournment of hearing, the Centre stated that it has raised several preliminary objections on certain documents that have been relied upon in the review petitions. The Supreme Court has already decided on the matter on April 10.

The court, in what was seen as a setback to the Narendra Modi government, permitted the pleas which had used leaked documents to build up the case for a review of the Rafale judgement. The Centre had claimed that the petitioners had used three privileged documents that were unauthorisedly removed from the Defence Ministry. In its December 14, 2018 verdict, the Supreme Court had rejected all petitions that had challenged the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France’s Dassault Aviation.

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