Supreme Court to deliver Rafale case judgement on Friday

A bench comprised of chief justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph heard various petitions seeking directions, including asking the centre to reveal details of the deal and the comparative prices during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule..

Four Public Interest Litigations (PIL) were filed in the court by lawyers M L Sharma and Vineet Dhanda, one by senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan, former union ministers Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha and another by AAP leader Sanjay Singh.

The Rafale deal is a defence agreement signed between the governments of India and France for the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter aircrafts in a fly-away condition as a part of the upgrading process of Indian Air Force equipment.

The Rafale fighter is a twin-engine Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) manufactured by French aerospace company Dassault Aviation.

Indian Air Force had advanced a proposal to buy 126 fighter aircraft in August 2007 and floated a tender. Following this, an invitation was sent to various aviation companies to participate in the bidding process.

Dassault Aviation, the makers of Rafale, had chosen Reliance Defence as its partner to fulfill offset obligations of the deal. The government has been maintaining it did not have any role in the selection of the offset partner.

The opposition has been accusing the government of choosing Reliance Defence over state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to benefit the private firm though it did not have any experience in the aerospace sector.