Gopal Subramanian’s trip to the United States to meet U.S. authorities on the Headley issue may have stirred a hornet’s nest. A debate is currently raging on whether or not the Home Minister was right in not consulting the Law Ministry before sending the Solicitor General on a goose chase.

The trip is organized at the bidding of the P. Chidambaram, the Minister for Home Affairs, to lobby for the extradition of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, David Coleman Headley, one of the main accused in the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008.

Headley was convicted on March 18 this year by a Chicago court after having pleaded guilty on 12 counts of terrorism charges, 9 of them relating to the Mumbai attacks. John T. Theis, a criminal lawyer practicing out of Chicago was defence counsel for Headley. He successfully bargained for letting Headley off on the death sentence and extradition to India.

However, that might be changing. In an interview with news channel NDTV, the Solicitor General revealed that he had met Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States of America. “We are very grateful to Eric Holder that he was able to see our point of view very clearly. And I think that it is a very good positive sign that has emerged,” he said.

News Daily Pioneer reports that that Veerappa Moily is miffed about having been kept in the dark about the trip. Gopal Subramanian had earlier opined on the issue of the extradition of Headley to India. The Minister for Home Affairs, P. Chidambaram [pictured] is understood to have asked Subramanian to pursue the options he had suggested in an opinion to the Home Ministry in March this year.

The appointment, terms of employment and rules generally governing the employment of the Solicitor General is governed by the Law Officer (Conditions of Service) Rules, 1987. Specifically, a provision restricts a Law Officer from advising any Ministry or Department of the Government of India unless such request has been forwarded through the Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice.

However, this provision was inserted in 2005, prior to which, there was no such requirement to forward the queries through the Department of Legal Affairs. The fact that the Home Ministry has kept the Law Ministry out of the picture while sending an officer primarily affiliated with the latter on work does seem to be an aberration. The next few days will be critical to see how this issue pans out.