New Delhi: The Centre has extended the tenure of Attorney General (AG) for India R Venkataramani for another two years after his three-year term ends on September 30.
“The President is pleased to re-appoint Shri R Venkataramani, senior advocate, as attorney general for India for a further period of two years with effect from October 1, 2025,” a notification issued by the department of legal affairs under the ministry of law and justice on Friday said.
“I am extremely happy for this extension. I can only say what I said at my initial appointment as AG in 2022. To be of service to the nation, how can one say no to any such opportunity,” Venkataramani, a former member of the Law Commission of India (2010) with over four decades of practice in the Supreme Court, said.
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 law to taxation.
He recently defended the 14 questions put forth by President Droupadi Murmu in her presidential reference to the Supreme Court on setting deadlines for governors and the President to clear state bills.
Venkataramani, who considers Professor N.R. Madhava Menon as his “guru”, enrolled as a lawyer in 1977 with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and joined the chambers of veteran lawyer P.P. Rao at the Supreme Court in 1979. He started his independent practice in the top court in 1982 and was designated a senior advocate by the Supreme Court in 1997.
{{/usCountry}}Venkataramani, who considers Professor N.R. Madhava Menon as his “guru”, enrolled as a lawyer in 1977 with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and joined the chambers of veteran lawyer P.P. Rao at the Supreme Court in 1979. He started his independent practice in the top court in 1982 and was designated a senior advocate by the Supreme Court in 1997.
{{/usCountry}}He was appointed as a member of the Law Commission of India in 2010, and again for a further term in 2013. He was also 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 as 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.
He has also been at the forefront of the execution of the Amrapali housing project since his appointment as a court receiver on July 23, 2019.
In his capacity as the top law officer representing India, he represented the country before the UN Human Rights Committee in 2024 and at the G20 Prosecutors General Conference in October 2024.
A voracious reader and academic, he published a volume of his poems titled Roses Without Thorns last year. Besides, he has authored several books on constitutional law and the law of torts, and collaborated with the Supreme Court of India in publishing a book on Supreme Court Practice and Procedure and the Restatement of Indian Law relating to Public Interest Litigation.