Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi (67) is set to take over as Attorney General of India from KK Venugopal on October 1. The Attorney General is the country’s top law officer and the Center’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court of India.
This will be Rohatgi’s second term as the top law officer. He held the Attorney General’s office from 2014 to June 2017, after which he resigned and continued his private practice.
The son of former Delhi High Court judge Awadh Bihari Rohatgi, Mukul Rohatgi was designated as a Senior Advocate in 1993 and later as an Additional Solicitor General in 1999.
In legal circles, Rohatgi is the most sought-after lawyer and his clients range from Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to politicians like the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and several big corporate houses.
Rohatgi had recently appeared in the Supreme Court for former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, against whom a probe was ordered after he was accused of giving himself a mining lease as the state’s mining minister.
Rohatgi also represented the Special Investigation Team in the Zakia Jafri case, in which the Supreme Court upheld the clean chit given to the Gujarat government in connection with the 2002 riots.
He was also a lawyer in the Supreme Court for the Lakhimpur Kheri case accused Ashish Mishra and the son of Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishra.
Rohatgi appeared in Supreme Court and Delhi High Court for Facebook and WhatsApp.
During his first term as Attorney General, he was part of petitions challenging the practice of triple talaq in Islam, criminal prosecution of security forces personnel over alleged extra-judicial killings in Manipur, and proceedings for playing the national anthem before films. in cinemas.
Rohatgi also took over as Attorney General when the challenge to the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) was pending in the Supreme Court but could not succeed. He argued strongly about the way the collegium system works and said that there is no transparency in the selection of judges.
Rohatgi is also credited with defending the validity of Aadhaar for the Centre.