Supreme Court asks Centre to provide pricing details of Rafale purchase, or say why it can’t in an affidavit

[dropcap]A[/dropcap] three-judge bench comprising of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, Justices U U Lalit and K M Joseph has today, October 31, 2018, directed the Government of India to place before it in a sealed envelope the pricing details related to the Rafale deal within 10 days. The Attorney General for India K K Venugopal objected citing the Official Secrets Act 1923 and said details of pricing and strategic cannot be shared with anyone. To this, Court told the AG to file an affidavit to this effect and court would examine the same.

On October 10, 2018, Court had asked for the decision-making process to be provided to it in a sealed envelope. The Court has now ordered that same decision-making process (excluding pricing and strategic details) would be made available to the petitioners before the Court in the matter.

With regard to the CBI probe as pressed by petitioner Prashant Bhushan, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, the Court asked them to wait for the same.