42 Facts About Arun Jaitley

Arun Jaitley was an Indian politician and attorney.

Arun Jaitley previously held the cabinet portfolios of Finance, Defence, Corporate Affairs, Commerce and Industry, and Law and Justice in the Vajpayee government and Narendra Modi government.

Arun Jaitley was a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India.

Arun Jaitley oversaw the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax which brought the country under one GST regime, demonetisation, merger of Railway budget with general budget and introduction of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

Arun Jaitley decided not to join the second Modi Cabinet in 2019, due to health issues.

Arun Jaitley was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, posthumously in 2020 in the field of Public Affairs.

Arun Jaitley was born on 28 December 1952 in Delhi into a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family.

Arun Jaitley's father Maharaj Kishen Jaitley was a lawyer and mother Ratan Prabha Jaitley a housewife.

Arun Jaitley studied at St Xavier's Senior Secondary School, Delhi from 1957 to 1969.

Arun Jaitley was the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad student leader at the Delhi University Campus in the seventies and rose to be the President of the Students Union of Delhi University in 1974.

Arun Jaitley was a prominent leader of a movement against corruption launched in the year 1973 by Raj Narain and Jayaprakash Narayan.

Arun Jaitley was the convener of the National Committee for Students and Youth organisation appointed by Jai Prakash Narayan.

Arun Jaitley was active in civil rights movement and helped found PUCL Bulletin along with Satish Jha and Smitu Kothari.

In 1977, being the convener of the Loktantrik Yuva Morcha at a time when the Congress suffered defeat, Arun Jaitley was appointed the president of the Delhi ABVP and All India Secretary of the ABVP.

Arun Jaitley was then made the president of the youth wing of the BJP and the secretary of the Delhi Unit in 1980, a short time after joining the party.

Since 1977, Arun Jaitley had been practising law in the Supreme Court of India and several High Courts in India.

Arun Jaitley was appointed Additional Solicitor General of India by the V P Singh government in 1989 and did the paperwork for the investigations into the Bofors scandal.

Arun Jaitley's clients cover the political spectrum from Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal to Madhavrao Scindia of the Indian National Congress to L K Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Arun Jaitley was appointed the Government of India's delegate to the United Nations General Assembly Session in June 1998 which approved the Declaration on Laws Relating to Drugs and Money Laundering.

Arun Jaitley had appeared on behalf of giant multinational corporations such as PepsiCo against Coca-Cola and in various other cases in India.

Arun Jaitley had been a member of the national executive of Bharatiya Janata Party since 1991.

Arun Jaitley became the spokesperson of the BJP during the period preceding the 1999 general election.

Arun Jaitley demitted the office of the Minister for Shipping with effect from 1 September 2001 and as Union Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs on 1 July 2002.

Arun Jaitley then served as the General Secretary of the BJP and its national spokesman.

Arun Jaitley was a member of the Central Election Committee of the party.

Arun Jaitley successfully introduced the 84th amendment to the Constitution of India in 2002, freezing parliamentary seats until 2026, and the ninety-first amendment to the Constitution of India in 2004, penalising defections.

Arun Jaitley was the BJP candidate for the Amritsar seat in the Lok Sabha for the 2014 general election, but lost to the Indian National Congress candidate Amarinder Singh.

Arun Jaitley was elected as a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat.

Arun Jaitley was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in March 2018.

On 26 May 2014, Arun Jaitley was selected by newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be the Minister of Finance, the Minister for Corporate Affairs and the Minister of Defence, in his cabinet.

Analysts cited Arun Jaitley's "part-time" focus on defence as a simple continuation of the policies of the previous government.

Arun Jaitley served as a member to the Board of Governors of Asian Development Bank.

In November 2015, Arun Jaitley said that personal laws governing marriages and divorces should be subject to fundamental rights, as constitutionally-guaranteed rights are supreme.

Arun Jaitley announced the Income declaration scheme, 2016 in September 2016.

Arun Jaitley oversaw the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax which brought the country under one GST regime.

On 29 May 2019, in a letter to Prime Minister Modi, Arun Jaitley cited his health as a reason for not taking an active role in the formation of the new government, effectively declining a role as a minister in the second term of Prime Minister Modi.

Arun Jaitley stated that naming the corrupt bank officials will not help in the investigation.

Previously in September 2012, Arun Jaitley had warned CBI on corruption cases involving political leaders from Gujarat.

Arun Jaitley married Sangeeta, daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Girdhari Lal Dogra, on 24 May 1982.

Arun Jaitley had a series of health-related issues and underwent multiple surgeries leading into his deteriorating health and subsequent death in 2019.

Doctors confirmed that Arun Jaitley had been "suffering from diabetes for nearly two decades" then, and that the said procedure was the best option for patients with "uncontrolled diabetes".

In February 2019, the media reported that Arun Jaitley had been diagnosed with a rare form of soft-tissue sarcoma and was undergoing treatment in the US, although it was termed a "regular medical check-up".