Supreme Court perplexed by Rahul Gandhi's date shift

Apprehensions of a possible manipulation behind listing of the high-profile contempt petition against Congress President Rahul Gandhi did rounds in the Supreme Court on Monday after Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi expressed utter surprise and shock on not finding the Rahul contempt plea listed along with the review petitions on the Rafale deal.

On Monday, when a special bench of CJI Gogoi, Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph sat to hear the review petitions, the Court surprised the lawyers and journalists in the courtroom by enquiring, "Where is the connected (contempt) matter related to Rahul Gandhi?"

Attorney General KK Venugopal, representing the Centre, said that the same was listed for hearing on May 10. One of the lawyers appearing for a review petitioner showed a copy of the order passed by Court on the last hearing on April 30 indicating the same.

Intrigued, the bench asked, "How can that be? We passed orders to list both the review and contempt petitions on May 6. How could the Registry have fixed the matters on different dates?"

The court was caught unaware of this development as it said, "Till yesterday night, we enquired from the Registry to know if any affidavit (from Rahul Gandhi) has come." This was in the light of the earlier order passed when the court allowed the Congress chief to file an affidavit tendering unconditional apology for attributing the words "Chowkidar Chor Hai" to the Supreme Court for its order of April 10 when it allowed secret confidential documents to be relied upon for hearing of the review petitions.

The other judges, too, joined in to express concern. Justice Kaul said, "I noticed this just now, following which I pointed it out to CJI."

The CJI then directed to list the two matters again on Friday and urged both sides to complete their argument on that day. However, the bench could not contain its discontent on the turn of events.

"We are perplexed that two cases carry two different dates when the order required both to be heard together. We won't say anything beyond that."

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who is one of the review petitioners, urged the court to continue with the hearing on the review petitions in light of the fresh affidavit filed by Centre. He pointed out that the Centre had yet to reply on his application to initiate perjury proceedings against the A-G for misleading the court on details about the Rafale deal.

The A-G objected saying that no notice has been issued on the perjury application. This invited a query from court as to why then the Centre had replied to the review petition.

RAHUL’S DUAL FRONT ON RAFALE

When a special bench of CJI Gogoi, Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph sat to hear the review petitions in the Rafale case, it inquired about the connected (contempt) matter related to Rahul Gandhi. It was then informed that the same had been listed for Friday.