Delhi University launched Arun Jaitley in politics

NEW DELHI: Arun Jaitley was among those BJP stalwarts who started their political journey with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the party’s student wing, and later made it big in national politics.

A student of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), Jaitley became president of the students’ union of his college in 1971 and in 1974 became the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) president when he was pursuing law. His contemporaries remember him as an outstanding orator with a sharp political mind.

Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Goel said he came in contact with Jaitley in SRCC in 1971 where the former Union finance minister was his senior. While Jaitley became president of SRCC’s student union, Goel was elected joint secretary.

“In 1975, we were the first ones to take out a huge protest march in Delhi University against the proclamation of Emergency. Jaitelyji was soon arrested and put in jail. I was arrested later for staging a hunger strike against the Emergency,” Goel recalled. “We both were together during the Sampoorna Kranti (total revolution) movement called by Jaya Prakash Narayan,” he added.

His contemporaries said Jaitley travelled to Ahmedabad and Patna in 1974 to support the JP movement and was later appointed national convenor of the ‘sangharsh samiti’ of student organisations protesting in Gujarat and Bihar for redressal of campus grievances. He spent 19 months in jail during Emergency.

The former Delhi BJP chief said his association with Jaitley, which began 48 years ago, had continued over the years. Goel said he often used to go to Lodhi Garden for morning walks with Jaitley and discussed various political issues. “There is a spot in Lodhi Garden where Jaitleyji used to meet people and discuss the world in the morning. That spot has become popular as Jaitley corner,” Goel said, adding that with the former Union minister’s death, he had lost a close friend and a guide.

Former Delhi Congress chief Subhash Chopra, who was four years senior to Jaitley and equally active in students’ politics, said differing political ideologies never prevented them from meeting and discussing university issues. Chopra said he was associated with Congress and was working for NSUI when Jaitley contested the DUSU elections as ABVP candidate and became president in 1974.

“There were instances when ABVP and NSUI traded charges against each other. On several occasions, we came face to face on one issue or the other. He was quite focused. Though I was a senior, my association with NSUI often brought me to the university. There was no bitterness in our relations despite differing ideologies,” said Chopra, who was DUSU president in 1970. “Politicians of our times, irrespective of any political affiliation, often meet each other as old colleagues and friends.”

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor had also met Jaitley in Delhi University. “He was at DUSU & I was President of St Stephen’s College Union. Despite political differences we enjoyed a healthy mutual respect & debated his Budget often in LS,” Tharoor tweeted on Saturday.