Senior Advocate of Supreme Court of India and Former Union Finance Minister and Corporate Affairs Miniter Arun Jaitley dies at 66. He was undergoing treatment at AIIMS New Delhi since August 9.
Arun Jaitley (28 December 1952 – 24 August 2019) was an Indian politician and attorney, who was the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of the Government of India from 2014 to 2019.
A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, 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. Arun Jaitley decided not to join the Modi Cabinet in 2019 due to health issues and died in August 2019.
On 26 May 2014, 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.
During his tenure as the Finance Minister of India, the government demonetized the ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi Series, with the stated intention of curbing corruption, black money, fake currency, and terrorism from 9 November 2016.
On June 20, 2017, he reaffirmed that the GST rollout is well and truly on track.
On May 29, 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.
