In most of politically important and sensitive cases, Mr Mehta is the main legal brain on behalf of the Centre and its agencies or for some governments and its agencies.

His proximity to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah goes back to their Gujarat days when Mr Mehta was the additional advocate general of Gujarat in the High Court.

After the NDA government came to power in 2014, Mr Mehta also shifted to the national capital when he was first appointed as the additional solicitor general and then was elevated as the SG in 2018.

According to an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training, besides Mehta, six Additional Solicitors General for the Supreme Court were also re-appointed for a period of three years.

However, the names of Additional Solicitors General Madhavi Goradia Divan and Sanjay Jain, whose tenure ended on Friday, did not feature in the list of re-appointed law officers. Another Additional Solicitor General Jayant K Sud, whose tenure came to end on Thursday, also did not feature in the list.

Meanwhile, the six ASGs who were re-appointed for the top court are Vikramjit Banerjee, K M Nataraj, Balbir Singh, S V Raju, N Venkataraman and Aishwarya Bhati. Their reappointment is also for the tenure of three years as per the DoPT notification.

The government has also approved the re-appointment of some law officers including Chetan Sharma, Additional SGI for High Court of Delhi, Satya Pal Jain, Additional SGI for Punjab & Haryana High Court, Devang Girish Vyas, Additional SG for the High Court of Gujarat and Dr Krishna Nandan Singh, Additional SGI for the High Court of Patna.