Highpoints of Arun Jaitley as India's Finance Minister

Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley breathed his last today after a prolonged illness. Jaitley took charge as independent India’s 26th Finance Minister on 26 May 2014. Let’s have a look at the major achievements of him.

New Delhi: Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley breathed his last today after a prolonged illness. Arun Jaitley was known for his no-nonsense politics and legal acumen. Though he handled a variety of portfolios at the Centre, including Information and Broadcasting, Defence and Law and Justice, he made important contributions to the country during his stint in the North Block as the Finance Minister.

Jaitley took charge as independent India’s 26th Finance Minister on 26 May 2014 in the NDA-2 government under Narendra Modi’s leadership. He presented the Union Budget for 5 times including a leap year budget which was presented on 29 February 2016.

Let’s have a look at the major achievements of Arun Jaitley as India’s Finance Minister

1. The country’s long-delayed indirect tax reform was finally implemented by Jaitley. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) took effect on 1 July 2017. Jaitley was instrumental in bringing the national and regional parties on-board and formulating the GST Act, that accords constitutional body status to the GST Council.

2. His push for setting up the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and its hawkish but vigilant stand against inflation is another big initiative of Jaitley. As a result, consumer price inflation was brought down from 7.72 % at the beginning of his tenure to around 3% currently.

3. Jaitley can also be credited for initiating the ongoing clean-up of the banking sector’s non-performing assets and creating a framework for a time-bound solution for bankrupt companies under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The Code was approved by the Parliament in 2016.

4. He overseen the merger of five associated banks of State Bank of India (SBI) and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with SBI, and also the merger of Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank with the Bank of Baroda. This was the major reform in the banking sector after nationalisation of banks in 1969 and 1980.

5. Budget reforms too were a part of his agenda. These included doing away with the artificial difference between the plan and non-plan expenditure and a separate railway budget. The presentation of the Budget was also preponed by a month and since 2017 onwards, it has been presented on February 1.

6. Leveraged the power of technology through Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) which has resulted in a savings of more than Rs 1.4 lakh crore.

7. The demonetisation of high value currency notes – Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes – was announced in 2016 when he was the finance minister.

8. Jaitley laid major thrust on using Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM) trinity for direct transfer of monetary benefits and subsidies. This initiative saved thousands of crores to the government.

9. Jaitley was able to manage the fiscal deficit around 3.5%.