As the stymied parliament session ground to a halt that August, Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, his counterpart in the Lok Sabha, released a fierce joint statement. It is a battle for safeguarding the economic resources for a larger public good. A few years earlier, Jaitley had offered a different type of opinion to Strategic Energy Technology Systems Private Limited, an ambitious joint venture between Tata Sons and a South African firm, in his capacity as a practicing lawyer. Shortly after the coal scam broke, the legal opinion was made available to the press by one or more UPA ministers.
As the BJP fanned the flames of protest against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—alleging that he had allowed controversial allocations under his watch as coal minister—the leaked opinion, a potential hot tip, became a hot potato. So the story was not carried. A year later, the story of the legal opinion finally appeared, but on the non-mainstream news website Altgaze, without the impact it might have had earlier. For four decades, Jaitley has stayed afloat on these currents, embracing the primary political imperative of change, and impressively adapting to it.
Jaitley had charge of defence until last November, when he took up information and broadcasting. In a notoriously tight-lipped regime, Jaitley is, to a great extent, entrusted with speaking. He has always loved to hold court, and his door is typically wider ajar than those of his colleagues in the party.
The Telegraph described a typical encounter in an interview with Jaitley, freshly glowing from his success in managing the Karnataka assembly elections. His sharp political insights are then peppered with pithy one-liners, jokes which have him convulsing with laughter more than his assembled audience.
He occasionally mimics other politicians. It can make you feel part of the club—a heady drug for all journalists and a validation that you are part of something important. And I have not been nice to him in print. A journalist repeated a joke he heard from the editor and former BJP MP and cabinet minister Arun Shourie, that Jaitley is a mass leader—with a mass base of six journalists.
