Attorney General Goolam E Vahanvati is no stranger to controversy

NEW DELHI: Attorney General Goolam E Vahanvati is no stranger to controversy, having survived many in his stint as the government’s top lawyer. A Mumbaikar with a flourishing practice before he became a Solicitor General and later AG, Vahanvati has given enough ammunition to his critics to blast him again, this time over his conduct in the coal scam.

As the government comes under withering criticism for ‘trying to manage’ a CBI report to the Supreme Court on the coal block allocations, Vahanvati’s role in the affair is developing as a parallel sideshow that is as interesting as the main, featuring the PM and the law minister, leading to calls for his ouster.

After reports surfaced that a team led by Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and comprising Vahanvati, his deputy Additional Solicitor General Harin Raval and a bunch of officials from the PMO and the coal ministry had vetted the CBI report, triggering an uproar, Vahanvati denied having done any such thing. His deputy Raval even told the Supreme Court that they had not seen CBI’s report, an assertion he was forced to go back on subsequently, causing great embarrassment. Raval has since accused Vahanvati of being less than truthful.

But in his trademark hairsplitting style he told the court that while he attended the meeting, he did not see the report. “I do not have the report and still do not have the report,” Vahanvati said, adding he was pained by Raval’s attack on him. His injured air, however, had few takers in the courtroom though. Accused by his critics of being close to certain corporate groups, Vahanvati had a central role in the 2G case too, and suffered the ignominy of being cross-examined at length by a lawyer for former telecom minister A Raja, becoming arguably the first AG to have gone into a witness box. The former minister claims that the telecom policy alterations he is accused of were first cleared with Vahanvati, which the AG denies.

Unfailingly polite and courteous, Vahanvati has survived reverses in the PJ Thomas case, when the SC struck down the appointment of the Kerala bureaucrat as the CVC. Will he be as lucky this time around?