Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi is new attorney general

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi was on Thursday appointed as the new Attorney General and will have a tenure of three years. The law ministry issued a formal notification appointing him as the top law officer of the National Democratic Alliance government.

The government has already appointed Ranjit Kumar as the solicitor general. Six additional solicitors general have also been appointed. Rohatgi took over from G E Vahanvati as the 14th AG of the country. Vahanvati had resigned following a change of the government at the Centre.

It is a convention that law officers step down after the change of government.

Rohatgi had recently said his top priority as attorney general would be to "streamline litigations in the Supreme Court." "I will see that the superior courts are not flooded with frivolous and petty litigations," he said, adding he would make all efforts to check that the government does not involve itself in inter-ministerial litigations.

"I will see and work out that the government department does not involve in litigations with each other," Rohatgi, who had also served as an additional solicitor general during previous NDA regime, had told PTI.

Rohatgi, son of former Delhi high court judge Justice Awadh Behari Rohatgi, has represented Gujarat government in the Supreme Court in the 2002 Gujarat riots and fake encounter death cases, including the Best Bakery and Zahira Sheikh cases.

A sought-after corporate lawyer, Rohatgi had represented Anil Ambani in the apex court in the gas dispute case between the Ambani brothers. He has also been representing the Italian embassy in the apex court in a case relating to two Italian marines involved in the killing of two fishermen off the Kerala coast in 2012.

Besides some of these high-profile cases handled by him, Rohatgi has been appearing on behalf of big corporates in the 2G scam trial.