The Centre on Friday asked the Supreme Court to make a correction in two sentences of the judgement in which it had refused to order an investigation into the Rafale defence agreement with France. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government submitted a plea after Congress President Rahul Gandhi had said that the Supreme Court judgement cited a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India that did not exist.

On Friday, the top court rejected petitions seeking an investigation into the matter while stating that the material on record did not show any favouritism. The Congress had alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party had submitted incorrect information to the court and demanded that it apologise to the top court for misleading it.

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In its application on Saturday, the Centre said, “The error in these two sentences as explained hereinafter, appears to have occurred, perhaps on account of a misinterpretation of a couple of sentences in a note handed over to this honourable court in a sealed cover. The observations in the judgment have also resulted in a controversy in the public domain, and would warrant a correction by this honourable court in the interest of justice.”

In its order, the Supreme Court had said the pricing details of the Rafale aircraft was provided to the Comptroller and Auditor General and that this CAG report had been examined by the Public Accounts Committee and a redacted portion was placed before Parliament.

The Centre claimed that the court’s usage of the words “has been” instead of “is” while referring to the Public Accounts Committees’s examination of the CAG report was misleading. The usage of the word “is”, the Centre claimed, would have denoted that the procedure “will be followed as and when the CAG report is ready”.

The Centre’s clarification also said that the top court’s order that only a redacted version “was” placed before the Parliament should have had the usage of “is” instead.