SC ruling on Rafale gives govt big boost

The Narendra Modi government has gained a huge psychological relief — and an opportunity to attempt to turn the tables on the Congress Party — following the Supreme Court judgment on Friday which turned down a clutch of petitions from prominent individuals to ask the CBI to institute a probe into the Rafale fighter jet deal. After the BJP’s electoral defeat in several Hindi heartland states earlier this week, the court’s judgment is likely to give the ruling party a morale boost ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha election.

For more than six months, the Congress has brought up the Rafale deal to allege massive corruption. Although there was no smoking gun, there appeared sufficient grounds to suspect foul play, especially over the pricing and the choice of the offset partner. The suspicion gained strength after observations to a French news portal made by former French President Francois Hollande, whose government had signed the inter-governmental agreement with India, for the off-the-shelf purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft from French company Dassault Aviation after the Modi government cancelled an earlier UPA-era agreement for 126 Rafales in collaboration with the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics.

The facts brought out by Mr Gandhi in the no-confidence motion debate in Parliament in July this year, to which the government did not appear to have persuasive answers, suggested that the Modi-era Rafale deal was for three times the price negotiated by the UPA earlier.

Another point of contention was that the choice of company chosen by Dassault to be an offset partner in India was irregular. The company chosen was practically bankrupt and had no experience of making aircraft.

The court dealt with these issues in a bland fashion, while indicating that it was constrained by bounds of jurisdiction. It also noted it was “not the job of this court to carry out a comparison of pricing details”.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court gave the government much relief by saying that procedures were not violated in formulating the amended contract with Dassault, a charge made by the Congress and others in public discourse, and that the issue of choice of offset partner did not appear to be driven by “commercial favouritism”.

This has set off a war of words between the BJP and the Congress. The Congress underlined it had not gone to court on the Rafale matter (while other petitioners had) as it felt the judiciary wasn’t the proper forum, given jurisdiction issues. Instead, it again pressed its demand for a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee where jurisdiction issues won’t arise. To clear the air, the government should accept this, especially after the court’s ruling. Finance minister Arun Jaitley and BJP president Amit Shah have spoken in differing tones on this.