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Arun Jaitley rose up the legal ranks with a creative approach to law
Considered one of the sharpest constitutional and corporate lawyers in the country, Jaitley logged off the legal profession in 2009 to focus entirely on politics.
Members of the legal profession paid tributes on Saturday to former finance minister Arun Jaitley, who passed away at the age of 66. An “irreparable loss for legal fraternity” was how Attorney General KK Venugopal, the country’s highest legal officer, described his passing in comments that found widespread resonance in the fraternity.
Considered one of the sharpest constitutional and corporate lawyers in the country, Jaitley logged off the legal profession in 2009 to focus entirely on politics. But even as a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, his contribution to the field of lawmaking and interpretation of the law continued.
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Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta said Jaitley helped shape the Centre’s views on the contentious Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which the Supreme Court watered down in September 2018 to the extent that it no longer penalised consensual sexual relationship between adults in any form.
“He prevailed on the government that the Centre should not take a stand on the matter and leave it for the court to decide. I think very few counsel had this kind of articulation, clarity and humane personality. He was an extraordinary human being and stood by in difficult times like a rock,” Mehta said.
Lately, he had taken to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to defend the government and give his perspective on complex legal issues. In a lucid and comprehensive manner, he explained legal matters simply.
Jaitley appeared in important cases dealing with both corporate and civil matters, said senior advocate and his colleague in Parliament Pinaki Mishra.
“He was a superb civil lawyer and his knowledge of civil procedure code was tremendous. His father was a leading civil lawyer in Tis Hazari courts and his grounding in civil matters came from that cutting edge level. [He] was also in the forefront of the Bofors investigations as he was appointed the ASG [additional solicitor general] at that time. But that was too short a period to untangle the Bofors web. He was one of the sharpest legal minds in the country.”
Jaitley had also appeared on behalf of giant multinational corporations such as PepsiCo Inc. against Coca Cola Co. and Vodafone Group Plc. in various other cases in India.
As the finance minister in 2014, Arun Jaitley recused himself from dealing with matters pertaining to the Vodafone tax dispute and delegated the task to the then minister of state Nirmala Sitharaman. “I stopped practising as a lawyer with effect from June 2, 2009. Prior to that, I had been consulted in the matter by the company on various taxation issues. I therefore considered it appropriate not to deal with the matter as a Minister. Matters concerned with the Vodafone case would be dealt with by the Secretary (Revenue) and the Minister of State (Finance),” he said in a Facebook post.
Jaitley did his LLB from Delhi University in 1977. In 1990, he was designated a senior advocate and appointed ASG, in which position he worked on the Bofors case .
Senior advocate Upmanyu Hazarika remembers his senior as someone who had powerful intelligence and a creative approach to the law. “... He had a creative approach in marrying his propositions to the law. Jaitley was largely self- taught in the sense that he practised in Tis Hazari courts, then moved to the high court and then to the Supreme Court . His discipline in terms of managing multiple environments at the same time was phenomenal. There was no one to beat him in terms of legal strategy and thoroughness,” he said.
