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The President of India has signed off on the re-appointment Senior Advocate KK Venugopal as Attorney General for India. His tenure will now run till July 1, 2021.
Earlier this month, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had confirmed that Venugopal would continue to serve as India's top Law Officer, although Venugopal had expressed his desire to relinquish the post.
"I had expressed my desire to not continue as Attorney General because of my age, but Centre requested me to continue for another year. I will be 90 by the time this one year will be over. To the best of my knowledge, there is no law officer or Attorney General in any part of the world, functioning at the age of 90. I, therefore, have agreed to continue for a year", Venugopal had told Bar & Bench.
Venugopal's term as Attorney General was earlier due to expire at the end of this month.
KK Venugopal was appointed as the 15th Attorney General for India on July 1, 2017. His term was set to expire on June 30, 2020. Venugopal had succeeded Mukul Rohatgi, who had stepped down after his first term ended on June 11.
During his first term as the Attorney General, Venugopal has appeared for the Centre in several prominent cases of Constitutional significance, including the following:
Cases defending the Centre's policies on Jammu & Kashmir such as the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the continuing restrictions on internet speed following the abrogation.
The Right to Privacy case. After the Court ruled that there was a fundamental right to privacy, Venugopal later hailed the verdict as an extraordinary one.
The case concerning the decriminalization of homosexuality in India.
The Aadhaar case. The review pleas against the 2018 judgment are presently pending before the top Court.
Cases concerning the Central government's controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which has been in limbo following the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent limited functioning of courts.
Venugopal has been in the legal profession for nearly six decades. He was an Additional Solicitor General during the tenure of Morarji Desai government. Widely regarded as an expert in Constitutional Law, Venugopal shifted base to Delhi from Chennai 25 years after joining the Bar in Madras.
By his own admission, Venugopal joined the legal field by sheer accident as he could not complete his BSc in Physics. He enrolled at the Bar in January 1954 in the erstwhile Mysore High Court, and thereafter at the Madras High Court.
He started his practice under his father, MK Nambiar. He initially practiced in litigation relating to the grant of motor vehicle permits, inter-state permits and variation of routes. He began appearing in the Supreme Court in the 1960s, when the Advocates Act was enacted. He grew in eminence as a Constitutional Law Expert and was designated Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court in 1972.