Written by Vidisha Mathur
Senior Advocate K.K. Venugopal is to be granted a three-month extension in his tenure as the Attorney General – which was supposed to end tomorrow.
He was appointed as Attorney General on July 1, 2017, for a term of 3 years and he has been granted two extensions of one year each since then. He has agreed to a further extension at the request of the central government – despite earlier being unwilling, owing to personal reasons.
K.K. Venugopal has been practicing law for nearly 60 years., and he has also once served as Additional Solicitor General under the tenure of Morarji Desai’s government. He has also been the recipient of the Padma Bhushan in 2002 and Padma Vibhushan in 2015. He is regarded as an eminent constitutional law expert.
He confesses that he joined the legal profession by accident – as he was unable to finish his bachelor’s in science. He enrolled at the Bar in the then Mysore High Court and then in Madras High court as well. He began his practice under his father, N.K. Nambiar and his initial litigation practice dealt with grants of motion vehicle permits, inter-state permits, and variations of routes.
He began appearing in the Supreme Court after the advent of the Advocate’s Act (1961)– which provided a unified bar for the whole country. This meant that by enrolling in one high court, a lawyer could practice in all high courts across the country and even appear in the Apex court. The Supreme Court designated him as Senior Advocate in 1972.
