Former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was not only an admired politician but also amongst the highest followed political personalities of the country on Twitter. A man of multiple talents he was also an avid Twitter user who used the platform to not only connect with the masses but to also respond to some of the most burning issues faced by the country in the past few years.
Jaitey had joined the micro blogging platform- Twitter in November 2013 and had garnered more than 3,000 followers only hours after signing up. Amongst the highly followed political personalities on Twitter he had over 15.3 million followers on the day of his demise.
He first tweeted on December 5.
The tweet said ”It gives me great pleasure to join this vibrant forum for sharing my views and interacting with you all”.
In the next six years, the former Finance Minister tweeted on a variety of subjects that were close to the hearts of millions of people.
“From gloom & doom driven by policy paralysis of the UPA, we have made India in the last 5 years the fastest growing economy in the world,” was one of his tweets.
Jaitley understood the sanctity of the platform and was never part of unnecessary mud-slinging on opposition leaders, and tried to stick to facts while sending out posts.
“We envision four priority areas for expenditure in New India – national security, health, education & infrastructure development,” he tweeted once.
Jaitley always tweeted in both English and Hindi to have a wider reach.
“Today there is no ‘gathbandhan’ let alone ‘mahagathbandhan’. It is a ‘non-bandhan’. They have no leader, no programme, no meeting of minds. Stability, which is paramount, is a major casualty. One thing is common i.e. a negative agenda ‘remove one man’. It is a recipe for chaos,” he tweeted on “failed” efforts of the Opposition to create an alliance against Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the 2019 general election.
“There are some in the political system who thought that they were born to rule. Some who were part of the ideological left & the ultra-left obviously found the NDA Govt. wholly unacceptable. Hence emerged a new class of Compulsive Contrarians, who run perpetual propaganda,” Jaitley took on Congress.
“People are more intelligent than what politicians may think. They never choose chaos as an option. Aspirational society never commits collective suicide as they do not suffer from a Lemming Syndrome. People want a 5-year government, not a 6-month one,” he posted.
During his active Twitter life, he was always to-the-point like in his real life and avoided getting into controversies even during the heated social media debates on demonetization and GST.
“The future vision is to make India a Five Trillion Dollar economy. By the middle of the next decade we will achieve this and thereafter, target doubling that size of the economy,” Jaitley once tweeted.
“Do not give an impression to the world that India is divided on how to fight terrorism. When the world is rallying around India, the Opposition in India should not be striking a discordant note,” he advised the Opposition.
His last tweet came on August 7 when he paid his tributes for Tulsidas Jayanti before tweeting how heartbroken he was at the death of his cabinet colleague Sushma Swaraj, who died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) following a cardiac arrest on August 6.
Saddened, pained & broken on demise of Sushmaji. She was one of the most outstanding politicians in the Present Era. She distinguished in all positions. She held Senior Positions with the Party, NDA Govt. & while in opposition. She leaves behind a void which is difficult to fill.
— Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) August 6, 2019
While his tweets may have fallen silent, but his followers will always remember him as someone who kept a clean social media profile, educating them all along the way.
