 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are going to discuss two major events that have taken place today, which is the biopic, the Namo biopic has been stopped for at least showing till the elections are on. It will only now be released after the elections. The second and it's an equally important issue, Rafal is not going away. That Rafal is going still to be on our at least on radar at the moment because the Supreme Court has accepted the documents on the basis of which the review petition was filed will be admissible and therefore the review petition is what is called maintainable. Not that it will be heard in this phase. Maybe it will be heard only after the elections, we don't know. But the review petition was challenged that the Rafal judgment of the Supreme Court was based on incomplete information or misleading information. That review petition is going to be heard. The biopic first, what is the implication of the biopic not being shown? A, B is election commission finally showing some, shall we say, assertion of an independent body after having come under criticism on many counts, latest of which was the nine count shall we say indictment that the former civil servants had made about the election commission and complained to the president. You're right. Over the recent week and a little longer, say the last 10 days or so, the election commission of India, its independence was being seriously questioned. As you said, not just by the political opposition but also by civil servants or retired civil servants and others. Because of a series of, you know, it was perceived that they were very soft on Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who talked about Modi ji ka Sena. They felt they were very soft on Kalyan Singh, the governor and also very soft on the prime minister himself when he announced about the anti-satellite launch of the destruction of a satellite. Now I think it's reacting to all this criticism and it decided on earlier in the day, that is Wednesday the 10th of April, that this film called Prime Minister Narendra Modi, its screening be stopped altogether before the elections. During the elections as well. Till the elections are over. Now and it has said because, why? Because it has the potential to disrupt and level playing field during the campaign in the run up to the elections. Which is obvious for a very long time. Absolutely. And they were ignoring, in fact, a congress politician had moved the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court had refused to hear the petition saying that, you know, don't waste our time kind of thing and let the central board of film certification certify the film. Within hours of the Supreme Court's decision, the central board of film certification did indeed certify the film. But now the election commission of India has said that is evidently violative of the model code of conduct and issued directions. The producer Sandeep Singh and the lead actor who acts as Narendra Modi in the film Vivek Oberoi, you know, that Vivek Oberoi was taunting the opposition and the congress. He actually said, are they scared of the film? Or the choketar's danda, the stick of the guard. Now the opposition is exultant. The congress party said this is a story about a flop hero, a flop producer making a film on a flop person. Leaving all of that out and undoubtedly good political humor may be on both sides of this. But leaving that out we saw today, for instance, when already the silence period should have started, full page ads of the Modi using the biopic as a pick. So that obviously was going to be. You know, theoretically, I don't want to be giving them good ideas. They can get somebody to quote unquote pirate the film and put it up on YouTube. Hey, I don't think that's what we should get into today. We're looking at what the election commission has done. There is also 10 parts serial doing the rounds on which I think five parts have already been already been screened, which rather brazenly seeks to promote the interests of the prime minister. So this is a similar kind of issue and what the digital platforms will do because this is really running on various platforms we will have to see. But that's for the future. At least finally the election commission has come down on one issue which has been roiling the political circles for the last 10, 15 days. And it is shown that it has some spine. It is finally shown that it is at least on some issues willing to take a position. Though the prime minister has just a couple of days back asked that people vote for the Phulwama and the Balakut strike. And you can even argue that some of his statements, including the issue of, I mean, when Raul Gandhi, you know, filed this nomination from Bayanad in Kerala, the use of the religious card mention of minority community, majority communities, Hindus, Muslims. Then you can also fault Mayavati on that count. So there are, of course, one can argue, we are the only ones. But effectively, the biopic was being sort of discussed for the last 10, 15 days. Finally, election commission has stopped it. So I think that should be welcomed. And hopefully, election commission will show more spine as events develop. Now the second big, shall we say, very significant development. Very significant development is, of course, that the file which had almost been written off, Supreme Court is supposed to have given it a certificate that there was no problem with this particular deal. Now it's come back because it has held the Supreme Court today actually in a conquering judgment, because all the three judges have said the same thing. That is Justice Ranjan Gogo, the Chief Justice of India, Justice Sanjay Kishankal and Justice Joseph, came Joseph. All of them have agreed. Agreed on the judgment. It's a unanimous judgment. In fact, Justice Joseph's judgment elaborates a little more on the issues, particularly how the RTI Act affects what was originally the Official Secrets Act. And he has said it's actually a sea change that has been brought in by the RTI Act. That's a very important clarification that he's made. And it's an elaborate one. This is also similar to what the two other Chief Justices have said. But Joseph's elaboration on this point, I think, is a very valuable addition to the jurisprudence in the country. Now coming back to the issue, what do you think, what was the issue before the court and what's the verdict that the court has given? Okay. Let me briefly just talk first a little bit about the political aspect, then as far as the media is concerned. And finally, I'll explain a little bit about what were these so-called secret, classified, stolen documents which were photocopied, unauthorized documents. What did they contain? First they said stolen, then they said photocopied. That's correct. At least it verified. The Attorney General verified to the public that the documents were authentic. So in effect, he authenticated the documents himself. So firstly, the rather weak and muted response of the Bharata Janta Party to the Supreme Court order. All along, the Supreme Court and even Mr. Modi had been saying it had been given a clean chit. Today, Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad said, and I quote him, a false perception has been created that the Supreme Court decision is a setback for the government. The court has agreed to look into some documents that were accessed in an unauthorized manner. So in a way, he's still sort of covering himself, but this is a very, very weak kind of a response because predictably, the opposition has been insulted about it and naturally, they should be. Now, the important point, as you rightly pointed out, it's not just the right to information act vis-à-vis the colonial era official secrets act. I think this decision of the Supreme Court is very, very important for the media. After all, these so-called unauthorized documents, which were genuine, had been published by the Hindu, by the caravan, by wire, and by New Slick, our very own New Slick. Ravi Nair has published or written about these documents in December and in February and in the wire in November. A Hindu published a series of articles in February. The most recent one was just on Tuesday that appeared, Tuesday the 9th of April and then, of course, caravan also published some documents in December. Now, what do these documents show? And that, I think, is the very, very substantive part of the whole story. I think the documents, which are genuine, clearly showed that the Ministry of Defence were objecting to parallel negotiations on the purchase of Rafale aircraft from Dassault Aviation in France were being carried out by the Prime Minister's office. This was a clear violation of the defence procurement procedure, the conduct of business rules and it really undermined the position of the Indian negotiating team. So, this is the first point. That's the first point. The second point is when you say Prime Minister's office, it is not just Prime Minister's office. The Ministry of Defence had serious reservations of the manager in which Mr. Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor, was allegedly interfering in these negotiations and on very, very important matters. Issues of the bank guarantee, the sovereign guarantee, where the seat of arbitration would be, whether or not there would be an anti-corruption clause. So, this is very, very significant. And what is also very, very clear is that this was known by the then Defence Minister, the late Manohar Parikar, who actually punted the ball to the cabinet committee. And eventually when faced with the fate of the company, he said, I go along with what the Prime Minister said. He really didn't have much of a choice. But what is very, very important that among the documents that were put out, and these were annexed in the petition that has been given to the Supreme Court by the petitioners, that is Arun Shodhi, Yashwant Seena Prashant Bhushan, which shows that in that seven-member Indian negotiating team, there were three members who dissented. Dissented on the price on the sovereign-stroke-bank guarantee issue? The entire methodology of procurement. So, that was very significant. These were Mr. M.P Singh, he was advisor of the cost. He was a joint secretary-level officer. He was from the Indian Cost Account Service. Mr. A.R. Sule, he was a finance manager in another joint secretary-level officer in charge of defence capital acquisitions for the Indian Air Force. And of course, Mr. Rajiv Verma, who was also a joint secretary, and he was a person who was anchoring all such and purchasing, what is I think are very, very important. One of these documents show that far from being what is supposed to be a collegiate process, this whole process of negotiation, there were attempts to manipulate that report. And I quote here, a number of factual inaccuracies and omissions were sought to be made. And this is a matter of great concern. This is in the dissenting note. That's right. These are in the records of that were leaked and which are Hindu published. And I think it's very, very important to note that by deleting certain clauses, including this bank guarantee, it had a commercial impact. Of course, it's a price advantage. You know that the bank guarantee would have cost another seven and a half percent. And that is in that sense a rebate with the government. That's correct. Just the terms and conditions got all altered. And also it's very important that corruption clause being removed. Now that is something which is very, very significant. That's correct. Because it means also certain books that have to be, could be inspected. If there's a case of corruption, the government committee has the right to inspect the books. That the two checks and balances were sought to be removed. And also the right of the government of India to inspect the books of Dassault to see whether there has been any unauthorized payments of the Bofors kind, they were actually removed because of this. And let me suggest why. And this is just, I'm surmising. And this is my interpretation of why these judges gave the judgments, the judgment that was given. I think they were, I think there's every reason for the Supreme Court to be disturbed, that when they asked for a note in a sealed cover, what the government apparently gave, the highest court of the land, was information that was misleading. This is still a conjecture. And I'm just conjecture. But I think it's also important to, that could be a background. But really what has been argued here is transparent law, that this has been the law of the country. We have upheld it from the time of the first case in the hero's government against Ramesh Thapar, which is extensively quoted. They've also said there is no charge that the Hindu should not have published this. It's illegal on the power. We are on Hindu's part to have published it. And mind you, and once it is in public domain, the admissibility of evidence in court is not as per US law, which says poison fruit of a poison tree, but Indian law, as well as the British law, the English law, allows for admissibility of illegal evidence as well. And here one of the illegally obtained. And here was one of the petitioners, Prashant Bhushan, drawing a parallel of what had been the judgment of the Supreme Court of the US pertaining to the Pentagon papers which had been published. That's what all other judges have also said. That's correct. But I think the main point is, it doesn't matter how you have obtained those documents. Are those documents genuine? To, are those documents germane and relevant to the entire issue that matters? But you know, to receive the closer case, the CBI's, the director of CBI's, the papers which were photocopied from the diary, which is maintained of all guests, was put in the court by Prashant Bhushan. And the courts accepted it. You're talking about the Rajit Sena's case. Exactly. Exactly. So we have already a precedence. So it is really, without getting it, what was in the closed envelope, and should the courts have the sealed envelope, business or not, leaving that out, or the legality of the, of this issue, the objection, the objections were very weak legally and the court would have been really, would have had to come back like your emergency judgment in the application of the government. The government itself said, telling the Supreme Court, you've got your grammar wrong. This is present tense. This is past tense. I mean, look, at some point of time, that's a petition which is actually going, this is a part of the review petition. There's part of the review petition and there's also a perjury application. So these are going to be decided and what we don't know is when the Supreme Court will take this out. Yes. I think that most of the election would have been perhaps over by that time. We'll have to see. Who knows? Who knows? We'll have to see. But the important part is that we have established that these documents were A, correct, that these documents were not wrong. The Attorney General has certified it and the Supreme Court has accepted, yes, these documents can be examined by the courts and has also accepted the right of the press to publish these documents. Three important developments in that. That's correct. Therefore, these documents, which are pretty damning as far as the government is concerned, are going to be considered as and when that review petition is heard in detail. And to me, this is also a political setback for the government, the same government which had been claiming that the Supreme Court had given it a clean chit. Now, the opposition is going to go to town and said it's not the case at all. It didn't. If it gave you a clean chit, it gave you on misleading documents, which you put presented to the court in the seal cover. Now that these documents are there, the court has every right to re-examine the case, which is hopefully what it will do. Thank you for explaining what this judgment means, the larger case, which is still going to go on, and the fact that Rafael is still going to be on the end. Thank you for being with us. Do keep watching NewsClick.