The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned till May 10 hearing in the review petitions filed against its December 14 judgment in the Rafale deal.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi adjourned the hearing due to an error in the Supreme Court registry that had listed the contempt petition against Congress president Rahul Gandhi, for attributing the ‘Chowkidar chor hai’ remark to the top court.
Rafale review petition hearing adjourned till May 10, when the Supreme Court will hear contempt petition against Rahul Gandhi as well. pic.twitter.com/RHPtp2Fr95
— ANI (@ANI) May 6, 2019
The bench expressed surprise that the review pleas and the contempt petition were listed separately on different dates when it had earlier ordered that both the cases be heard together.
The top court had on 10 April said it will allow ‘leaked’ Rafale documents to be taken up as evidence in the case.
The review petition against the Supreme Court’s December order was filed by former Union ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha, and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
On Saturday, the Centre had filed an affidavit before the SC and claimed, “Monitoring of the progress by PMO of government process cannot be construed as interference or parallel negotiations. The then Hon’ble Raksha Mantri had recorded on file that …it appears that PMO and French President’s office are monitoring the progress of the issues which was an outcome of the summit meeting.”
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The affidavit had come in after the apex court on Tuesday directed the Centre to file a response on the pleas challenging the top court’s judgment.
On December 14, 2018, the Supreme Court had dismissed all petitions seeking court-monitored probe into the Rafale fighter jet deal with France, saying that there was no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the deal.