Senior lawyer Venkataramani appointed AG for three years

Venkataramani, 72, will take over from incumbent KK Venugopal, whose third-term extension at the top law officer’s post will end on September 30.

New Delhi: Senior advocate R Venkataramani was on Wednesday appointed as the Attorney General (AG) for India for a period of three years, days after eminent lawyer Mukul Rohatgi withdrew his consent for the assignment saying he had “second thoughts” about it.

R Venkataramani (ANI)

Venkataramani, 72, will take over from incumbent KK Venugopal, whose third-term extension at the top law officer’s post will end on September 30.

“The President is pleased to appoint Shri R Venkataramani, senior advocate, as Attorney General for India for a period of three years from the date he enters upon his office,” stated a notification published by the Union ministry of law and justice on Wednesday evening.

A former member of the Law Commission of India (2010), Venkataramani has over four decades of practice in the Supreme Court. Invariably soft-spoken and temperate in his arguments, the senior lawyer has regularly appeared in the top court in a spectrum of cases ranging from constitutional laws to taxation.

Venkataramani, who considers Professor NR Madhava Menon as his “guru”, enrolled as a lawyer in 1977 in the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and joined the chambers of veteran lawyer PP Rao at the Supreme Court in 1979. He started his independent practice in the top court in 1982, and was designated as a senior advocate by the Supreme Court in 1997.

Venkataramani was appointed as a member of the Law Commission of India in 2010, and again for a further term in 2013. He was a co-opted member of the expert group constituted by the Union ministry of minority affairs in 2007 to examine and determine the structure and functions of an ‘Equal Opportunity Commission’.

Venkataramani has argued against the right to wear hijab in educational institutions before the Karnataka high court as well in the Supreme Court. Representing a teacher from Karnataka in the case, the senior lawyer contended that any religious symbol, including hijab, creates a “wall of separation” between the teacher and the student and that the absence of assertion of religious identities is a conducive environment to inculcate education.

Venkataramani has also been at the forefront of execution of the Amrapali housing project since his appointment as a court Receiver on July 23, 2019. Since then, Venkatramani has been instrumental in arranging funds for the stalled Amrapali projects by getting in ₹650 crore funding from the Union government-sponsored SWAMIH (Special Window for Affordable & Mid-Income Housing) Investment Fund for six Amrapali projects. Later, through his initiative, the project got a windfall of ₹1,500 crore from a consortium of seven nationalized banks. Currently, he has been pursuing strenuously to get additional funds by sale of unused FAR in Amrapali projects and liquidating assets held by Amrapali Group and its erstwhile directors.