Ranjit Kumar quits as solicitor general for personal reasons
NEWDELHI: Solicitor general Ranj it Kumar, the second-highest ranking legal officer in the country, quit his position citing personal reasons on Friday.
Kumar’s resignation letter, which was submitted to the law ministry, stated that his official responsibilities and busy schedule were leaving him with little time for his family .“The government is good tome, but I tendered my resignation due to personal reasons,” he said.
Sources said the senior advocate’s mother has been ailing for a while now, and he was struggling to take time off his duties to attend to her medical needs.
Kumar’s resignation comes within four months of senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi relinquishing the attorney general’s post on June 11. The top law official, in his letter to the central government, had said he was not keen on procuring a tenure extension. He had also cited personal reasons, besides a keen desire to resume his private practice, for his decision.
Rohatgi’s letter came nearly a week after the government notified the tenure extension of five law officials – including the attorneygeneral and solicitor general –until further notice. He was succeeded by senior advocate KK V en ugo pal. Prior to taking up the solicitor general’s job, Kumar used to handle environment- related cases in the Supreme Court.
Notably, he had assisted the top court in prescribing a series of directives that eventually led to the Capital’ s public transport system switching to a cleaner fuel– the compressed natural gas. His other legal contributions included playing a crucial role in a river-pollution case that the apex court took up on the basis of an HT report titled ‘And quiet flows the maili (dirty) Yamuna’, and assisting the court in a case pertaining to the relocation of polluting units from residential areas to suburban Delhi.