by Biranchi Narayan Acharya

When you fail in your perception war you always try to find some loopholes without context of the entirety to remain defiant and try to justify your perception. The same happened with the Congress in the case of Rafale verdict by the SC.

Mention of CAG and PAC (as per government claim that this could be a typo or mis-interpretation for which they have filed a petition for correcting the controversial paragraph or the sentence) has been raised to create a smoke screen trying to hold the perception created for political reasons. If one goes through the entire Rafale verdict then the perception falls flat as even without the mention of CAG and PAC, Court verdict still stands. One should see the verdict in its wholeness. For a clear understanding, the SC verdict is provided here.

Decision Making

SC is very clear that there's no problem with the decision making process. The relevant parts below 

Page-19 And 20

The above is very clear that SC concludes when the deal was finalised none has questioned. Only when the former French President said that Indian government gave no option on IOP (Indian offset partner selection) petitions were raised not only on IOP but also procedural and pricing. Clearly it points that it's an afterthought process and according many including myself believe that this is for vested political interest.

SC verdict also says that the UPA era negations practically came to end. It says 'It is also a fact that the long negotiations of procurement 126 MMRCAs have not produced any result and merely conjecturing that the initial RFP could have resulted in to a contract is of no use. The hard fact is that not only the contract not coming forth but the negotiation came practically to an end, resulting in a recall of RFP'. This also validates that there shouldn't be any comparison with UPA deal because that deal was never made and ended in to an agreement after negotiations stopped because of stalemates.

Pricing

Here opposition is trying to propel a perception that Government's alleged misinformation that the price has been shared to CAG and examined by PAC, SC held that pricing is alright on the Rafale deal. But if you go through the entire verdict on pricing you will find that SC's judgement doesn't rely on CAG or PAC. It's just a matter of process.

SC says it wasn't initially interested to go through the pricing. Later it asked for the pricing. Then it says it has examined closely on prices (page-22, paragraph-26). That means SC is satisfied by its examination irrespective of the fact whether CAG or Pac has examined or not. That's why I say one should always go through a report or verdict in its entirety.

Offset

Similarly on Indian offset partner it totally relied upon DPP, 2013 (Defence Procurement Process, 2013) made by UPA and as per that process it found no favouritism.

Bottom line is the SC verdict has covered extensively everything and then gave a verdict on merit. That's why it concluded that the deal is fine at the same time it emphasised it's confidentiality in the interest of national security and requirement of Indian defence.

Conclusion

It's always said that, one can fool some people all the time, all people for all the time but you can't fool all the people all the time. When will Rahul Gandhi and his ardent followers realise that fooling nowadays Indian public is not easier. They should search for better narrative than harping on false and fabricated perception because such efforts of fooling will cost them dearly.