Rafale deal: Centre wants SC to dismiss all review petitions

Agencies
May 25, 2019

New Delhi, May 24: The Centre has filed written submissions in the Supreme Court stating that all review petitions seeking investigation into the Rafale deal should be dismissed. The submissions were filed in the apex court on Friday.

Earlier, advocate Prashant Bhushan, one of the petitioners in the Rafale case, had argued that December 14 judgment did not take note of the plea seeking an investigation in the matter and registration of the first information report (FIR).

He claimed that there was no precedent of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) redacting pricing details from its report regarding the deal.

"Not even in one case in the past, pricing details have been redacted. It was unprecedented that pricing details were redacted," he contended before the bench, also comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph.

Bhushan also questioned as to why the standard anti-corruption clauses relating to the deal were allegedly deleted by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).

"Eight standard clauses including all standard anti-corruption clauses were dropped from the Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) post-August 24, 2016 in Rafale deal and the same was not informed to the court," he said.

"A lot of crucial information was suppressed from this court and the impugned judgment was obtained on the basis of fraud played upon the court by the government," the lawyer said.

In his arguments, Attorney General (AG) KK Venugopal, representing the government, said, "There is no question of any corruption. The court has already decided that in the Rafale case verdict (on December 14 last year)."

On the pricing of the fighter jets, he said: "The issue was covered under Article 10 of the Inter-Governmental Agreement and was not supposed to be discussed in public domain."

Venugopal contended that the court did not want the pricing to be disclosed but had only asked for the procedure adopted in the deal.

"We produced the procedure. And even if there are errors in it, that will not be a ground for review. The entire judgment cannot be set aside," he said.

"The lives of pilots were at risk. The 126 MMRCA process was not working. So a conscious decision was taken by the government to go ahead with the procurement of the 36 Rafale aircraft," the Attorney-General submitted.

The bench then questioned Venugopal on the initial dissent expressed by three experts. "These officers later agreed to all the clauses and the decision was taken unanimously. It was then placed before the CCS," he replied.

The review petitions were filed by Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie, Prashant Bhushan, and others.

In the December 14 judgment, the Supreme Court had said that there was no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the deal.

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News Network
June 3,2020

New Delhi, Jun 3: Seasoned diplomat and former spokesperson of the External Affairs Ministry Raveesh Kumar has been appointed as India's next Ambassador to Finland, the government announced on Wednesday.

Raveesh Kumar, a 1995-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, served as the spokesperson of the MEA from July 2017 to April 2020 during which he deftly articulated India's position on a number of sensitive issues including last year's Balakot strike, reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir and the controversy surrounding the National Register of Citizens.

"He is expected to take up the assignment shortly," the MEA said.

Before becoming the MEA spokesperson, Kumar was serving as Consul General of India in Frankfurt.

Kumar started his career at the Indian Mission in Jakarta and it was followed by his postings in Thimpu and London.

In his nearly 25-year career, Kumar also looked after the East Asia desk in the headquarters of the MEA in Delhi and served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Jakarta followed by his posting as Consul General in Frankfurt from August 2013 to July 2017.

In Finland, he succeeds Vani Rao.

Finland is an important country for India in Europe, and bilateral trade has been on an upswing in the last few years.

Around 35 Indian companies have invested in Finland in IT, healthcare, hospitality and automotive sectors while over 100 Finnish companies have operations in India in energy, textiles, power plants and electronics sectors.

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News Network
June 4,2020

Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.

The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.

Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.

Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.

In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.

In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."

According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.

The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.

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News Network
July 24,2020

Lucknow, Jul 24: A special CBI court on Friday recorded the statement of veteran BJP leader LK Advani in the Babri mosque demolition case.

The statement of the 92-year-old former deputy prime minster was recorded through video conferencing in the court of special Judge S K Yadav.

On Thursday, the court recorded the statement of BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in the case. 

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