While his critics accuse him of misleading the court and of giving convenient and contradictory opinions to suit the government, Attorney-General Goolam Vahanvati has never been pulled up by the apex court or held guilty of misrepresenting facts. Activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan pulls no punches and offers an explanation to Uttam Sengupta. Excerpts:

You and the attorney-general, to put it mildly, have no love lost between you. What provokes such antagonism?

A dishonest government needs a dishonest law officer to legitimise their corrupt decisions. And the present A-G unfortunately has been shielding the government’s questionable decisions.

You even called him a liar in court. Was that just courtroom bluster?

When he denied in court having seen the CBI’s status report on the Coalgate scam, I did say he was lying. By that time the letter addressed to him by the additional solicitor-general, Harin Raval, was in the public domain. Raval had quit...