Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi is set to become Attorney General of India for a second time from October 1.
The tenure of the incumbent Attorney General, K.K. Venugopal, is coming to a close on September 30. The 90-year-old jurist has made it clear that he would not want to continue as the top law officer.
Mr. Rohatgi (67) had served as the 14th Attorney General of India when the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014. He had served for three years, till 2017. He had returned to private practice and Mr. Venugopal was appointed the 15th Attorney General.
Mr. Venugopal had initially served a tenure of three years and was later given extensions. The last one was in June 2022 for a period of three months.
Mr. Rohatgi has recently represented the Special Investigation Team in the Zakia Jafri case in which the Supreme Court had upheld the clean chit given to the Gujarat government in connection with the 2002 riots. He had also represented Aryan Khan, the son of actor Shahrukh Khan, in a narcotics case before the Bombay High Court. Mr. Rohatgi was lawyer for Ashish Mishra, an accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri case and son of Union Minister, in the Supreme Court.
The senior advocate was at the helm when a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) during his first stint as Attorney General.
