Former FM Arun Jaitley moves out of official home to South Delhi residence, returns govt cars, staff members

Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has relinquished his official bungalow, surrendered all his government cars and has moved with his family to his own house in South Delhi. Jaitley who voluntarily opted out of the Modi 2.0 due to poor health has also returned all his staff members, security guards, as well as discontinued 25 newspapers he had subscribed to. The former Finance Minister has also asked his personal staff to pay all the dues of electricity, water bill, phone bills too.

Arun Jaitley had held both finance and defence portfolios in the first term of the Modi government. He was allotted an official bungalow at 2 Krishna Menon Marg in 2014. He will now be moving to his own home in Kailash Colony.

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A lawyer by profession, Arun Jaitley has been the most important leader in Modi's Cabinet and has often acted as the chief troubleshooter for the government. As finance minister, Jaitley steered major economic legislations through the Parliament such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which had languished for nearly two decades.

Jaitley, 66, also played a key role in getting through several other laws such as the bill to ban the Muslim instant divorce practice known as 'triple talaq' and also articulately defended the Rafale fighter jet deal.

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The former Finance Minister was admitted to AIIMS in May to undergo tests and treatment for an undisclosed illness and was discharged on Thursday - the day results of Lok Sabha elections were announced. He did not attend celebrations at BJP headquarters that evening after the party's emphatic victory. BJP won a landslide 303 seats, of the 542 seats, in the general elections.

Jaitley underwent surgery in the US on January 22 for a reported soft tissue cancer in his left leg, an illness that deprived him of presenting the Modi government's sixth and final budget of its current term.

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