The Union government strengthened its top legal team by extending the term of K.K. Venugopal as the Attorney General (AG) for one year, Tushar Mehta as the Solicitor General (SG) for three years and appointing six new Additional Solicitors General (ASGs) besides extending the tenure of five existing ASGs.
While the AG was reappointed by President Ram Nath Kovind, the other appointments were notified by the Law Ministry late on Monday after the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared them.
The Centre’s top law officer, Mr. Venugopal, who was appointed in July 2017 after his predecessor Mukul Rohatgi had resigned, has been appointed for a year at his own request because of his advanced age of 89 years.
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Mr. Mehta has been given a full three-year extension, beginning July 1, by the ACC.
Serving ASGs Vikramajit Banerjee, Aman Lekhi, Madhavi Goradia Divan, K.M. Nataraj and Sanjay Jain also got three years’ extension, a release from the Department of Personnel and Training said.
To represent the Central government before the Supreme Court for three years, the Cabinet committee appointed six senior advocates Balbir Singh, Suryaprakash V. Raju, Rupinder Singh Suri, N. Venkataraman, Jayant K. Sud and Aishwarya Bhati have been appointed as ASGs.
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Besides reappointing Anil C. Singh as the ASG for the Bombay High Court and Satya Pal Jain for Punjab and High Court, five new ASGs have also been appointed for different High Courts.
Yezdezard Jehangir Dastoor has been appointed for Calcutta High Court, Chetan Sharma for Delhi HC, Sankaranarayanan for Madras HC, Krishna Nandan Singh for Patna HC and Devang Girish Vyas for the Gujarat HC.