Kolkata: Senior Advocate Surojit Nath Mitra has been appointed as the new Advocate General of West Bengal.
He succeeds Kishore Datta, who tendered his resignation from the chair on May 5, a day after the results of the recently conducted West Bengal Assembly elections were announced.
Practising for over four decades as a legal practitioner since 1983, Mitra’s expertise has been in civil and commercial law.
The judicial department of West Bengal issued a notification announcing the appointment of Mitra as the new Advocate General.
“In exercise of power conferred by Clause (1) of Article 165 of the Constitution of India, the Governor is hereby pleased to appoint Shri Surojit Nath Mitra, Senior Advocate, High Court, Calcutta, to be the Advocate General for the State of West Bengal on usual terms and conditions, until further orders, with effect from the afternoon of 29th May,” read the notification issued by the Principal Secretary to the state judicial department.
As Advocate General during the major part of the previous Trinamool Congress regime, Mitra’s predecessor Kishore Datta had a quite eventful term.
He was appointed as West Bengal’s Advocate General twice during the last 15 years of the Trinamool Congress regime since 2011.
An extremely close confidant of outgoing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Datta resigned when the state government was on the back foot due to the post‑poll violence case following the 2021 Assembly elections. Then, Soumendranath Mukherjee took charge as the Advocate General.
However, in November 2023, Mukherjee suddenly resigned from the chair, following which Datta was appointed West Bengal’s Advocate General for the second term.
Datta’s resignation from the chair of Advocate General on May 5 coincided with the development when advocates from the legal cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) approached the Calcutta High Court’s Chief Justice Sujoy Paul, requesting his intervention to put on hold verdicts and orders in state‑related cases till the formation of the new state cabinet.
Soon after that, it was confirmed that Datta had tendered his resignation from the chair of West Bengal’s Advocate General.
(IANS)
