New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: Senior BJP leader and former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley passed away on Saturday after suffering from kidney ailment. He was 66.
He was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi after he complained of palpitations and restlessness.
Jaitley was admitted to the Cardio-Neuro-Centre of the hospital around 10 am at August 9. He had a kidney transplant last year and had left for a "regular medical check-up" in the United States in January this year.
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Jaitley had undergone surgery in the US on January 22 for a reported soft tissue cancer in his left leg, an illness that deprived him from presenting the Modi government's sixth and final budget of its previous term. The then Railway and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal was the stand-in finance minister who presented the interim budget for 2019-20.
He did not contest the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. After the Narendra Modi-led BJP government came to power in May 2019, Jaitley, in a letter to PM Modi, had said that he'd like to stay away from "any responsibility" on account of his ill health.
In his letter, Jaitley had said that it had been an "honour" and a "learning experience" to be part of the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government.
Meanwhile, in his last message to public, Jaitley had praised PM Modi’s decision to revoke Article 370 and ending the special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
Praising the government, he had said that PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have earned a place in history, asserting that the vision of party's ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee has proved correct and that of Jawaharlal Nehru a "failure".
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A lawyer by profession, Jaitley was one of the most important leader in Modi's Cabinet first term and often acted as the chief troubleshooter for the government.
While as a finance minister he steered through Parliament major economic legislations such as the nationwide Goods and Services Tax (GST) -- which had languished for nearly two decades, he has also played key role in getting through several other laws such as the bill to ban the Muslim instant divorce practice known as 'triple talaq'.
He had also served as a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.