A day after the Supreme Court left a scope for a further probe into the the Rafale deal, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and former BJP leader and Minister Arun Shourie on Friday demanded that the CBI should register a case regarding the deal.
Bhushan, Shourie along with another former BJP member and Minister Yashwant Sinha had filed a review petition in the apex court after it cleared the Government last year in the Rs 59,000 crore deal for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France in a government to Government deal. Other review petitions on the same issue were filed by lawyer Vineet Dhanda and Aam Aadmi Party lawmaker Sanjay Singh.
The apex court on Thursday again gave a clean chit to the Modi Government and said there is no ground to order an FIR by the CBI or a roving inquiry into allegations of irregularities in the deal.
But Bhushan referred to the judgment of Justice K M Joseph, one of the three judges of the bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi that gave the verdict.
In his separate but concurring judgement, Joseph said the CBI, the country's premier probe agency, is expected to act "completely independent" of the Government of the day and professionalism of "highest quality", uncompromising independence and neutrality is expected of it.
"The CBI has to seek the permission of the Government for probing the case and it has three months to do so," Bhushan said. If the CBI does not do so, it has to cite reasons for not probing the case.
Bhushan said here it is binding on the CBI to probe their complaint despite the ruling by the three-judge apex court bench. If the CBI fails to do so, it will again approach the Supreme Court, Bhushan told reporters at a press conference also addressed by Shourie. Sinha was not there.
He also said it has been more than a year since the complaint was submitted to the then CBI Director Alok Verma. "Accordingly, we expect Rishi Kumar Shukla, his successor, to seek the necessary approval from the competent authority under Section 17A to begin the necessary inquiry into the complaint in earnest in conformity with the judgement of the court," he contended.