Rafale review: SC will look into appointment of Anil Ambani owned company as offset partner

New Delhi, Apr 10: The Supreme Court has rejected a preliminary objection raised by the Centre against the review petitions on the Rafale Deal.

The Centre had raised objections to the court hearing the review of its verdict in the light of the petitioners submitting fresh documents. During the course of the arguments, the petitioners had also questioned the appointment of the Anil Ambani owned company as the offset partner of Dassault, the French manufacturer of Dassault.

The court said that it would fix a date to hear the review pleas in detail. As a result of this the court would go into various aspects including the point raised by the petitioner with regard to the appointment of the Anil Ambani owned company.

In its ruling on a batch of petitions seeking a probe into the deal, the court had earlier said there was no occasion to doubt the decision-making process in the procurement of the 36 Rafale fighter aircraft from France.

Dassault Aviation, the makers of Rafale, had entered into an agreement with Ambani's Reliance Defence Ltd (RDL) for fulfilling offset obligations.

"I welcome the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court today summarily dismissing all PILs filed on the Rafale contracts, and conclusively establishing the complete falsity of the wild, baseless and politically motivated allegations levelled against Reliance Group and me personally," Ambani had said in a statement.

The Congress has been alleging that the government had put pressure on Dassault Aviation to select RDL as its offset partner. The government, RDL and Dassault Aviation rejected the charges.