Statue of
former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to be unveiled in Patna on his birth
anniversary also the Vice President will release a book written on his life in
Delhi.
Arun Jaitley
was an Indian politician and attorney. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party,
Jaitley served as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of the
Government of India from 2014 to 2019.
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.
From 2009 to
2014, he served as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
He was a
Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of India. He 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.
Jaitley decided not to join the second Modi
Cabinet in 2019, due to some health issues.
His father
Maharaj Kishen Jaitley was a lawyer and mother Ratan Prabha Jaitley a housewife.
He studied
at St. Xavier’s School, Delhi from 1957–69. He graduated with the honours
degree in commerce, BCom. from Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi in 1973.
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.
Jaitley
suffered from a series of health-related issues and underwent multiple
surgeries leading into his deteriorating health and subsequent death in 2019.
In 2005, he
underwent a coronary artery bypass surgery after he was diagnosed of high blood
pressure.
In 2014, when he weighed 117 kilograms (258
lb), a gastric bypass surgery was performed on him aimed at reducing his
weight. Doctors confirmed that Jaitley had been “suffering from diabetes
for nearly two decades” then, and that the said procedure was the best
option for patients suffering from “uncontrolled diabetes”.
In May 2018,
he underwent a kidney transplant surgery.
By 23 August,
his health had deteriorated. Jaitley died the following day, aged 66. He was
cremated at Nigam Bodh Ghat on 25 August. The Indian Cricket team wore black
armbands for a day during the test match with the West Indies, to condole
Jaitley’s death.