By Matters India Reporter

New Delhi, August 24, 2019: Arun Jaitley, a former finance minister of India and an alumnus of a Jesuit school, died on August 24 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. He was 66.

Jaitely, a stalwart of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was unwell for the past two years. In 2018, he underwent a kidney transplant surgery, following which he was put under isolation. Four years earlier, in 2014, Arun Jaitley underwent a bariatric surgery to address the excess weight he had gained due to diabetes.

He was rushed to the AIIMS on August 9 after he complained of breathlessness and restlessness.

It is with profound grief that we inform about the sad demise of Arun Jaitley, the AIIMS said in a brief statement.

Jaitley was born on December 28, 1952, at New Delhi. He studied at St. Xavier’s School, Delhi from 1957–1969. He graduated with an honors degree in commerce, B Com 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.

As finance minister, Arun Jaitley presented all of the Narendra Modi government 1.0’s budgets. However, due to his ill health, he was unable to present the 2019 Interim Budget, which was instead presented by his colleague Piyush Goyal.

After the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Arun Jaitley wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting that he not be given any responsibilities in the new government as he wanted to focus on his health.

A lawyer by profession, Arun Jaitley was among the leaders who were jailed by the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency. He was a student leader at the time.

After being released from jail, Arun Jaitley joined active politics as a member of the Jan Sangh and rose through the ranks of the organization, which later became the BJP.

A lawyer by profession, Arun Jaitley also served on the Atal Bihari Vajapyee cabinet. Between 2009 and 2019, when the BJP sat in the Opposition benches, Arun Jaitley served as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

Arun Jaitley is survived by his wife and two children.