Centre notifies extension of Venugopal as AG

NEWDELHI:THE President of India on Monday notified the reappointment of senior advocate KK Venugopal as Attorney General for India (AG) a period of one year from July 1. Attorney General is the Centre’s top law officer and chief legal advisor who represents the government of India in crucial cases before the Supreme Court. KK Venugopal took over as Attorney General on July 1, 2017. He is the 15th person to serve as Attorney General for India.

Venugopal succeeded Mukul Rohatgi who was Attorney General from June 2014 to June 2017.

Venugopal was asked by the central government to continue as AG after his three-year tenure was set to expire on June 30. He agreed but asked the government to restrict his second tenure for only 1 year considering his advanced age. He is currently 89 years old. Usually, law officers are appointed for a three-year term. Besides, the AG, the serving Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta is also set to get an extension. The Appointments Committee of the Union Cabinet approved extension of Mehta’s tenure for three more years from July 1.

Five serving additional solicitor general, Vikramajit Banerjee, Aman Lekhi, Madhavi Goradia Divan, KM Nataraj and Sanjay Jain also received extension for three years. The cabinet also cleared the appointment of six new ASGS to represent central government before the Supreme Court for a period of three years. They are Balbir Singh, Suryaprakash V Raju, Rupinder Singh Suri, N Venkataraman, Jayant K Sud and Aishwarya Bhati.

Five new ASGS have also been appointed for HCS— Yezdezard Jehangir Dastoor (Calcutta), Chetan Sharma (Delhi), Sankaranarayanan (Madras), Dr. Krishna Nandan Singh (Patna) and Devang Girish Vyas (Gujarat).