Last updated on July 24th, 2023 at 03:31 pm
Arun Jaitley was an Indian politician and attorney who served as the Minister of Finance from 2014 to 2019. Jaitley, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, served as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of the Government of India from 2014 to 2019. Jaitley has previously held the cabinet portfolios of Finance, Defence, Corporate Affairs, Commerce and Industry, and Law and Justice in the Vajpayee government and Narendra Modi governments.
He served as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha from 2009 to 2014. He was a Supreme Court Advocate who was senior in ranking. He oversaw the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, demonetization, the merger of the Railway budget with the general budget, and the introduction of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code – all of which brought the country under one GST regime. Due to health issues, Jaitley decided not to join the second Modi Cabinet in 2019.
Enthralling Achievements and facts about Arun Jaitley’s Political career:-
Arun Jaitley was born on December 28, 1952, in Delhi into a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family. Arun Jaitley’s father, Maharaj Kishen Jaitley, was a lawyer and his mother, Ratan Prabha Jaitley, was a housewife. He attended St. Xavier’s Senior Secondary School in Delhi from 1957 to 1969. He graduated with a B.Com in commerce from Shri Ram College of Commerce of Delhi University in 1973. He passed his examination for a Bachelor of Laws degree. He received his degree in 1977 from the Faculty of Law at the University of Delhi.
Jaitley was the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) student leader at Delhi University in the seventies and was elected President of the Students Union of Delhi University in 1974.
Jaitley was appointed the president of the Delhi ABVP and All India Secretary of the ABVP in 1977 when he was the convener of the Loktantrik Yuva Morcha and the Congress party was experiencing a defeat. After joining the party, he was made the president of the youth wing of the BJP and the secretary of the Delhi Unit in 1980.
Jaitley has been practicing law in the Supreme Court of India and several High Courts in India since 1977. The Delhi High Court designated him a Senior Advocate in January 1990. He was a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and was also a member of the Indian National Congress.
Since 1991, Jaitley had been a member of the national executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party. During the period preceding the 1999 general election, he became the spokesperson of the BJP.
He was appointed Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting (Independent Charge) on 13 October 1999, after the Vajpayee Government of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance came to power.
On May 24, 1982, Arun Jaitley married Sangeeta, daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Girdhari Lal Dogra. They have two children, Rohan and Sonali. Sonali married Jaiyesh Bakhshi. Both of his children are lawyers. He had a brother and a sister.
On 12 September 2019, a function was held at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in memory of Arun Jaitley, at which Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium was renamed as Arun Jaitley Stadium. The decision to name the stadium after he came as he had been the president of DDCA and also the vice-president of the BCCI.
Amit Shah, Home Minister, unveiled a statue of Arun Jaitley at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 28 December 2020.
He was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, in 2020 in the field of Public Affairs.
His health had deteriorated by 23 August 2019. Jaitley died the following day at 12:07 p.m. He was cremated at Nigam Bodh Ghat on the 25th of August. To condole Jaitley’s death, the Indian Cricket team wore black armbands for a day during the test match with the West Indies.
