Mukul Rohatgi To Be India’s Next Attorney General: Reports
This will be Mukul Rohatgi’s second stint as the Attorney General for India.
The central government has decided to appoint Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi as the next Attorney General for India, effective Oct. 1, the Indian Express and Bar & Bench reported on Tuesday.
The Attorney General for India is a constitutional post and is appointed by the President of India and advises the government on legal matters.
Considered among the top lawyers of the country, Rohatgi earlier served as the first Attorney General of the Narendra Modi-led government between 2014-2017. During this tenure, he appeared in the National Judicial Appointments Commission case, argued for the Centre seeking invalidation of Triple Talaq, the criminal defamation matter, and the Aadhaar-PAN linkage case, among others.
Prior to this, Rohatgi had served as the Additional Solicitor General under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government. Rohatgi was succeeded by Senior Advocate KK Venugopal, whose term ends on Sept. 30.
Post the completion of his term in 2017, Rohatgi went back to private practice and has since appeared in several high-profile cases, including the decriminalisation of Section 377, the Amazon-Future case, as well as the case involving Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.
Known for his candor, Rohatgi spoke with BQ Prime shortly after completing his tenure as attorney general in 2018.
He had shared his views on the unprecedented media conference by four senior judges calling it as "out of the ordinary", adding that "having been a part of this community for 40 years now, do not subscribe to this press conference. It should have been dealt with inside the court".
On the parallels between the apex court's verdict in Triple Talaq and Sabarimala cases, he had said:
Sabarimala doesn’t have disastrous situations of life and death which happens to be the case in Triple Talaq. Sabarimala is a matter of religion. The 4:1 verdict has placed the right to equality over religious practice. So, according to me the judgment of the four judges is flawed.Mukul Rohatgi To BQ Prime In 2018
In a 4:1 verdict, the Supreme Court had granted women, of all age groups, entry into Kerala's Sabarimala temple, breaking the temple's age-old tradition of restricting menstruating women from entering its premises.
Watch the 2018 Mukul Rohatgi interview here: