I hereby pay my last respects to the leader who will always remain in the nation’s psyche for long time to come. Arun Jaitley, former Finance Minister and BJP veteran who died and cremated with state honours in Delhi. When news came in media that he is critical, people started assuming that he passed away. He lived almost 66 years of life and then the health hazards, we might love him as our leader but as sufferer he needed salvation from pains that he was going through. He had been admitted for two weeks. Jaitley was an erudite and sophisticated gentleman who was an excellent orator and Parliamentarian. A true Indian, who led the country during tough times and brought people together. His many accomplishments and inspirational moments will live well into the future. In his passing away, we have lost an eminent lawyer-politician and BJP’s loss is much more as there are very few individuals like late Arun Jaitley who could articulate the party’s policy.
He was undoubtedly one of the most influential leaders this generation has seen. Close on the heels of the saddening demise of Sushma Swaraj, Jaitley’s death has given a body blow to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that the party will find difficult to fill.
From being scrutinised for being chosen as the finance minister despite not being an economist to dealing with ill health and a kidney transplant to being one of the first few ministers to support LGBT rights to filing a defamation lawsuit against AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, Jaitley has had it all.
Arun Jaitley, who was once upon a time a spokesperson, was an intellectual and articulate speaker whose work in the party has played a key role in propelling the party to great heights. Right from the time when BJP was a no-force to the time when BJP is the force to reckon with, he stood thick and thin through hard times the party has faced while ousting the Gandhi regime which Congress symbolised for decades and which continues to exist. May the departed soul receive deliverance amid the purist souls of hundreds whose memories of patriotism.
Arun Jaitley was born on December 28, 1952 in Delhi. His father Maharaj Kishen Jaitley was a lawyer and mother Ratan Prabha Jaitley a housewife. He studied at St. Xavier’s School, Delhi and graduated with the honours degree in commerce, B.Com. He passed his LLB degree from the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, in 1977. Jaitley was the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) 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. During the period of proclamation of Internal Emergency (1975–77) when fundamental rights were suspended, he was under preventive detention for a period of 19 months. He was a prominent leader of a movement against corruption, launched in the year 1973 by Raj Narain and Jayaprakash Narayan. He was the convener of the National Committee for Students and Youth organisation appointed by Jayaprakash Narayan. He was also active in civil rights movement and helped found PUCL Bulletin along with Satish Jha and Smitu Kothari. After being released from jail, he joined the Jan Sangh. In 1977, being the convener of the Loktantrik Yuva Morcha at a time when the Congress suffered defeat, Jaitley was appointed the President of the Delhi ABVP and All India Secretary of the ABVP. He 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. On October 13, 1999, after the Vajpayee Government of the BJP led National Democratic Alliance came to power, he was appointed Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting. In addition to this, he was appointed Minister of State for Disinvestment (Independent Charge). The disinvestment ministry was created for the first time in accordance with the policy of disinvestment under the World Trade Organisation regime. On July 23, 2000, following the resignation of Ram Jethmalani as the Union Cabinet Minister of Law and Justice, and Company Affairs, he took over his ministry as an additional charge. On May 29, 2019, in a letter to PM 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 married Sangeeta, daughter of former Jammu and Kashmir finance minister Girdhari Lal Dogra, on May 24, 1982. They have two children, Rohan and Sonali; the latter married Jaiyesh Bakhshi. His both children are lawyers. In January 2019, Jaitley was diagnosed with a rare form of soft-tissue sarcoma and sought treatment in New York. Jaitley died at the AIIMS in New Delhi. Arun Jaitley was cremated with state honours in Delhi this afternoon. Cutting across party lines, a number of political leaders paid their respects to him and attended the funeral.
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