Arun Jaitley

Some Lesser Known Facts About Arun Jaitley

• During the time of the Partition of India, his father, Maharaj Kishen Jaitley, migrated to India from Lahore (Pakistan).

  

• He had five uncles and two aunts; four of his uncle were lawyers.

• When Jaitley was young, he used to go to the disco with his friends. However, he did not know how to dance, even then he usually had gone to the disco. At that time, only one disco, ‘Seller’ used to be in Delhi.

• During the 1960s, he was fond of watching movies. According to his friend, Ranjit Kumar (former Solicitor General of India), “We used to keep chatting, cracking jokes. Mr Jaitley had an elephantine memory and we all were envious of that. If he would describe a song or a scene from a movie in the 1960s, it would be with every minute detail.”

  

• He had feared car driving. However, he loved having new branded cars, but he never tried driving. Earlier, his wife, Sangeeta Jaitley, used to drive him and later, he had a chauffeur.

• In childhood, Jaitley had resented Jawaharlal Nehru, as he considered that Jawaharlal Nehru caused the Partition of India due to which, hundreds of thousands of people suffered.

• Jaitley actively participated in the Student Union Elections as the student leader of the ABVP during his studies at the Delhi University and also became the President of the Student Union of the Delhi University in 1974.

  

• In 1973, he actively participated in a movement against corruption launched by Jayaprakash Narayan and Raj Narain.

• He remained under preventive detention for 19 months during the period of Internal Emergency (1975-1977).

  

• Jaitley wanted to become a Chartered Accountant (CA) in his younger days.

  

• Since 1977, he had been practising as a lawyer before the Supreme Court of India and several other High Courts in India. But, since June 2009, Jaitley had stopped practising law due to holding important portfolios in the BJP and the first Modi Government.

• In January 1990, Jaitley was designated as a Senior Advocate by the Delhi High Court.

• In 1989, he was appointed Additional Solicitor General by the Government of India.

• He also did the paperwork for the Bofors Scandal investigations; prepared all the files and helped security agencies investigate the whole scandal.

• His clients include a wide spectrum of politicians from Madhavrao Scindia of the INC to Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal to L. K. Advani of the BJP.

  

• He had also authored several publications on current and legal affairs.

• In 1998, the Government of India delegated him to the United Nations General Assembly where the Declaration on Laws related to Drugs and Money Laundering was approved.

• He has also appeared on behalf of a number of multinational giants such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in India.

• In 2002, Jaitley had passed the 84th Amendment to the Constitution of India, which enabled the freezing of Parliamentary seats until 2026.

• Jaitley used to walk regularly in the morning in the Lodhi Garden, New Delhi. In 2005, he had suffered a heart stroke during a walk in New Delhi’s Lodhi Garden. He was driven to a hospital nearby by his friend, Ranjit Kumar.

  

• He had never contested any direct election until 2014 when he contested the General Elections from the Amritsar but lost to Congress’ Captain Amarinder Singh.

  

• It is said the Jaitley had helped Narendra Modi in winning the 2002 Gujarat Assembly Elections.

• He is the uncle of actors, Akshay Dogra and Riddhi Dogra.

• He was the first person to suggest the name of Narendra Modi for the post of the Prime Minister of India.

  

• When he was the finance minister in the first Modi cabinet, the government introduced one GST regime and demonetized the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi series to stop black money, corruption, fake currency, and terrorism. During the same time, 2000 rupee notes were released by the Reserve Bank of India.

  

• His wife, Sangeeta Jaitley, is a daughter of late Girdhari Lal Dogra who served as the Finance Minister in the Government of Jammu & Kashmir for 26 years.

  

• He had not contested election in the 2019 General Elections due to his health issues. He opted out of the new cabinet by writing a letter to the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

  

• The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi expressed his condolences on the demise of Arun Jaitley on Twitter.

  

• In September 2019, the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium was renamed after his name in his honour as ‘Arun Jaitley Stadium.’

• Here’s an interesting video about Arun Jaitley’s biography: