Arun Jaitley

Arun Jaitley (28 December 1952 – 24 August 2019) 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 health issues.

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

Early life

Arun Jaitley was born on 28 December 1952 in Delhi into a Punjabi Hindu Brahmin family which migrated from Lahore during Partition of India. His father Maharaj Kishen Jaitley was a lawyer and mother Ratan Prabha Jaitley a housewife. He studied at St. Xavier's Senior Secondary School, Delhi from 1957 to 1969. He graduated with the honours degree in commerce, BCom from Shri Ram College of Commerce of Delhi University in 1973. He passed his LLB degree from Faculty of Law, University of Delhi in 1977.