Indian Supreme Court Gives Clean Chit to Rafale Deal

SC Finds No Irregularities In Purchase of Rafale Jets, Dismisses All Petitions for Court-Monitored Probe (excerpt)

NEW DELHI --- In a boost to the Modi government, the Supreme Court on Friday said it found no irregularities in the NDA government's decision -making process to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from Dassault under Indo-French intergovernmental agreement. The SC has dismissed all petitions for a court-appointed probe into the deal.

The SC made it clear it wasn't the job of the top court to go into pricing when the need and quality of the aircraft is not in doubt, adding that it did not find anything wrong in the selection of Indian offset partners by Dassault.

The apex court gave a clean chit to the government on three aspects -- decision making process to purchase 36 Rafale jets instead of 126 by the previous UPA government, pricing of Rafale jets and selection of Indian offset partners including Anil Ambani owned Reliance Defence by Dassault.

Calling it "mere conjecture" on part of some persons to cite the UPA deal for 126 Rafale jets against NDA's 36 jets as implying that negotiations for 126 jets had come to a standstill, CJI Ranjan Gogoi said, "We cannot sit on judgment over 36 vs 126 nor can we compel the Union government to buy 126 jets." (end of excerpt)

Click here for the full story, on the Times of India website.

Click here for the Supreme Court judgement (29 PDF pages) on the India Supreme Court website.

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