NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday expressed concern as to how, contrary to its order, the petitions seeking review of its verdict in Rafale case and the contempt plea against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for wrongly attributing his statements to the apex court were listed separately.
A special bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said, “We are little perplexed that the two cases are listed on different dates when the order was that these matters will be heard together.”
As soon as the hearing began on Monday, the CJI asked the Supreme Court Bar Association chief Vikas Singh if the contempt petition against Rahul was also listed for Monday, to which he replied that the petition will come up on May 10.
“This is the problem. There was an order for listing both the matters together. We had dictated the order in an open court but it says one case on May 6 and other on May 10. How can this be done?” the CJI responded.
The bench then slated the hearing for May 10 when both cases will be heard together. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who is one of the petitioners in the case along with former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, told the bench that there were three pleas before the court.
Bhushan said besides the review plea, there were two other applications —one seeking perjury action against unknown government servants for allegedly misleading the court during the Rafale case hearing earlier and the other for the production of certain documents.
Leaked documents
In a setback to the Centre, the SC on April 10 allowed the plea relying on leaked documents for seeking review of Rafale verdict and rejected Centre’s preliminary objections claiming “privilege” over them