Summary
The Supreme Court rejected preliminary objections seeking to exclude three publicly reported defence documents and thereby defeat the Rafale review petitions. Their contents had entered the public domain, and neither secrecy markings, the asserted manner of procurement nor the RTI exemption justified their exclusion on these facts. The petitions were to be considered on merits with regard to the documents’ relevance. A separate concurrence emphasised public-interest balancing and cautioned against treating relevance alone as invariably decisive where privilege is properly engaged.
Issues
- Whether the published documents had to be excluded because they were allegedly obtained without authority.
- Whether official-record privilege and the RTI security exemption barred their use.
- Whether rejecting those objections decided the review petitions’ merits.
Provisions considered
- Section 123, Indian Evidence Act, 1872The privilege claim failed on the facts concerning documents already publicly available; the judgment considered the public-interest basis of immunity. (¶¶ Gogoi CJI: 2, Gogoi CJI: 6, Joseph J: 7–13, Joseph J: 25–31)
- Section 8(1)(a) and (2), Right to Information Act, 2005The public-interest override and prior public availability defeated reliance on the security exemption to exclude these documents. (¶¶ Gogoi CJI: 8–9, Joseph J: 15–24)
Held
- The documents had already been published, and no statutory provision authorising their exclusion from judicial consideration merely because of their secret designation was identified. The Official Secrets Act objection did not establish the claimed bar. (¶ Gogoi CJI: 3–5)
- Public-interest immunity required attention to the public interest rather than an automatic executive assertion. With these documents already accessible to the public, excluding their evidentiary worth on the asserted privilege would serve no practical purpose. (¶ Gogoi CJI: 6)
- Improper procurement alone does not ordinarily exclude relevant evidence absent an express or necessarily implied constitutional or statutory prohibition. The RTI scheme also permits disclosure where public interest outweighs protected harm. (¶ Gogoi CJI: 7–9)
- Joseph J concurred separately, explaining the effect of the RTI public-interest override and noting that the contents were not disputed and production of originals was not sought. He cautioned that properly engaged privilege can require more than a relevance test and that publication of an innocuous fragment does not necessarily publish an entire record. (¶ Joseph J: 13–31)
- Only the preliminary objections were dismissed. The review petitions still required adjudication on their own merits, considering the relevance of the documents; no final finding of procurement wrongdoing was made at this stage. (¶¶ Gogoi CJI: 12, Joseph J: 32)
Result
Union’s preliminary objections dismissed. Review petitions to be adjudicated on merits taking account of the relevance of the three documents; their merits were not finally decided by this order.