The US verdict on Pentagon papers leak has put India's Narendra Modi government in a spot

• India's Supreme Court will consider fresh evidence to be produced by petitioners in the Rafale deal.
• Judges turn down the incumbent government's appeal against the sourcing of the evidence.
• The Government had contended that the new evidence may not be admissible because they were 'privileged' documents.
  

A nearly 40-year old verdict from the Supreme Court of US, in the Pentagon papers leak that unraveled America's involvement in the Vietnam war, has become the basis of the latest court verdict in an alleged corruption case against the Indian government.

The country's most recent scandal involving the Narendra Modi's agreement to purchase 36 Rafale fighter jets from French company Dassault has seen a fresh twist. The country's top court will consider fresh evidence brought in by the petitioners against the government.

The government's appeal that the documents to be presented were 'privileged', deemed secret by the government, and, therefore, inadmissible as evidence, has been unanimously turned down by the bench of judges, including the Chief Justice of India.

A Indian daily alleged, citing classified documents, that the Modi administration gave unprecedented waivers to the French company escalating the cost to the exchequer. The series of reports were taken up by the petitioners in the case for seeking a review of the earlier judgement that did not find any reason to doubt the government's decision.

The Modi government's Attorney General, KK Venugopal, contended that the sourcing of these documents by the newspaper, The Hindu, was a breach of the Official Secrets Act. However, that has now been turned down by the Indian Supreme Court. However, the petitioners cited the US Supreme Court verdict on the Pentagon papers leak to say that once documents are published, the government can no longer claim privilege.

In 1971, the New York Times had published leaked papers from the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defense, that uncovered America's secret involvement in the Vietnam war. Following the leaks, the then US government had tried to book the whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg for conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property and endangering national security. The charges against Ellsberg were later dropped.

The Rafale deal

In April 2015, the Indian government announced that it will buy 36 Rafale fighter jets off-the-shelf, scaling back from an earlier agreement, struck by the previous government, to buy a total of 126 jets, of which 18 would be off-the-shelf.

Rivals have accused the Modi government of reworking the deal at higher cost to the taxpayer, of about ₹58,000 crore, and adding clauses that would benefit a friendly industrialist, Anil Ambani, whose company Reliance Defence had been picked as Dassault's Indian partner.

To be clear, while questions have been raised against the Rafale deal, so far nothing has been proven beyond doubt. Even the federal auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, had given the government a clean chit.

The latest Supreme Court order to consider the fresh evidence has come a day before polling begins in the 2019 general elections where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a second term. His rivals are likely to turn up the heat on the ruling coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the eve of the polling to tilt the scales in their favour.

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