Finance minister Arun Jaitley is the first and the only minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to make public the details of personal assets and liabilities this year.
Jaitley’s financial statement, uploaded on the website of the Prime Minister’s Office, shows a decline of 8.9 % -- from Rs 67.01 crore to Rs 60.99 crore -- in the value of assets as compared to the last financial year.
The value of jewellery has gone up by Rs 9.9 lakh, but his bank balance reduced from Rs 3.52 crore in FY 2014-15 to Rs 1 crore in FY 2015-16. Jaitley owns four -- instead of five cars, and has less money in bank and hand.
In a bid to maintain transparency in public life, Union ministers are required to submit their annual declaration of assets and liabilities and their wife and dependents.
For the last financial year, however, assets declaration of 13 ministers, including home minister Rajnath Singh and women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi, was not available on the PMO website.
Some of the other ministers whose assets declarations were not available were Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Babul Surpiyo, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Sarbananda Sonowal, who recently took charge as the chief minister of Assam.
{{/usCountry}}Some of the other ministers whose assets declarations were not available were Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Babul Surpiyo, Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Sarbananda Sonowal, who recently took charge as the chief minister of Assam.
{{/usCountry}}A quick look at Jaitley’s declaration shows that he owns six properties across Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat and Punjab. All are jointly held and five of them have his wife, Sangeeta Jaitley, as co-owner.
The finance minister has no investment in mutual funds or any other market instruments. He has company deposits of Rs 16 crore in Empro Oils and DCM Shriram Consolidated.
Jaitley owns two Mercedes, one Toyota Fortuner and a Honda Accord. In the last finance year, he also had a BMW. All his cars have registration numbers ending with 6666. Jaitley has three savings accounts with HDFC Bank and one with the State Bank of India.