Rafale row: Where is the ‘clean chit’ ?

Ridiculing BJP leaders’ claims that the Supreme Court has given the government a ‘clean chit’, Congress leader Kapil Sibal’s advice to them is to read ‘more’.

“They are obsessed with delivering speeches but do not have a reading habit, especially when it comes to documents,” says Sibal while batting for the Supreme Court on the Rafale judgment. It is the government, he says, which is responsible for furnishing misleading information to the apex court in a ‘sealed cover’. But despite being misled by the ‘factual bloomers’, he argues, the Supreme Court did not give a ‘clean chit’ to the government on Rafale, as claimed by the Prime Minister, the Law Minister, the Home Minister, the Defence Minister and the BJP president.

“The court clearly says that it has not gone into pricing, technical aspects or merits of the two deals,” he points out and asks, “where then is the question of giving a clean chit?”

Sibal advises BJP leaders to read paragraph 12 of the judgment, which reads, “It was made clear that the issue of pricing or matters relating to technical suitability of the equipment would not be gone into by the court.”

It’s not the court but the government and the Attorney General, he says, who must answer whether the government informed the court the following:

1. That the French company Dassault and Indian PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd had signed a workshare agreement on March 13, 2015.

2. That the Dassault CEO had stated on March 25, 2015 that 95 per cent of the agreement was in place (the government appears to have informed the court that the earlier deal was not coming through).

3. That Reliance Defence was incorporated on March 28, 2015 and had neither land nor any work experience at the time.

4. That the pricing was not in the public domain and had not been examined by the Public Accounts Committee.

Dismissing BJP leaders’ demand that Congress should tender an apology to the nation, Sibal says the government must apologise for misleading the court and withholding information.

The Congress, he pointed out, was not a petitioner in the Supreme Court and has consistently demanded a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) into the allegations.

Taking a dig at BJP president Amit Shah, Sibal joked that he would soon be gifting the BJP president a pair of bionoculars, reminding the media of Amit Shah’s boast before the recent state Assembly elections that even binoculars would fail to find the Congress after the declaration of results.

This article first appeared in National Herald on Sunday.