Seeking removal of the “leaked” files submitted by the review petitioners from the records in the Rafale case, Attorney General KK Venugopal on Thursday told the Supreme Court that state documents could not be published without explicit permission as the government had privilege over them.
Seeking removal of the “leaked” files submitted by the review petitioners from the records in the Rafale case, Attorney General KK Venugopal on Thursday told the Supreme Court that state documents could not be published without explicit permission as the government had privilege over them.
Referring to Section 123 of Evidence Act and provisions of RTI, Venugopal said, “Under the provision of Evidence Act, no one can produce privileged documents in court without permission of department concerned.”
Hearing petitions seeking review of its December 14, 2018 judgment in Rafale deal case, the CJI Ranjan Gogoi-led three-judge Supreme Court bench said RTI Act had an overriding effect on Official Secrets Act.
“What privilege do you (Attorney General) claim? They (petitioners) have already produced them in court. As per Section 22 and Section 24 of RTI Act ‘even intelligence and security establishments bound to give information about corruption and human rights violations,” the bench, also comprising Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph, said.
To this, the Attorney General argued that the security of the state superseded everything. “They (petitioners) have produced it after stealing it. State documents can’t be published without explicit permission,” Venugopal said.
The petitioners, former Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and advocate Prashant Bhushan, have sought a review of the apex court’s verdict that dismissed all PILs seeking a probe into alleged irregularities in India’s Rafale deal with France.
In the last hearing, the Attorney General claimed in the Supreme Court that documents related to the Rafale fighter deal were “stolen” from the Ministry of Defence, and threatened to invoke the Official Secrets Act and initiate “criminal action” against two publications which ran reports on the basis of these documents, and a lawyer.
Venugopal initially did not name the publications but towards the end of the hearing said: “documents in the possession of The Hindu and ANI are stolen documents”. He even said a probe into the theft was underway.
However, a day later Venugopal did a U-turn and claimed that the petitioners had annexed three documents which were photocopies of the original.