Attorney General KK Venugopal gets fresh one-year tenure

Attorney General K K Venugopal was on Monday reappointed as a top law officer of the country for one more year.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and five Additional Solicitor Generals, Vikramjit Banerjee, Aman Lekhi, Madhavi Divan, KM Nataraj, and Sanjay Jain got another three-year term beginning July 1, 2020.

Six senior advocates Balbir Singh, Suryaprakash V Raju, R S Suri, N Venkataraman, Jayant K Sud, and Aishwarya Bhati are new faces in the legal team of the Union government as they were also appointed as Additional Solicitor General for a period of three years.

Eleven ASGs would represent the Union government in the Supreme Court.

Two Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand and A N S Nadkarni were, however, dropped from the list of law officers, so far representing the Centre in the Supreme Court.

A series of notifications, approving the appointment of law officers, was issued on Monday.

Earlier, Venugopal, 89, was offered an extension by the government but he has consented to it for the period of one year only on the ground of his age.

Known as the doyen of Indian Bar, Venugopal has appeared for the Centre in Aadhaar and Rafale cases, among others, in the Supreme Court.

He, along with Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, has been defending the Union government in other important cases including those related to the Citizenship Amendment Act and the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution.