Top quotes by BJP stalwart Arun Jaitley

New Delhi, Aug 24: Arun Jaitley, who passed away at AIIMS today, was a key member of the BJP.

He was extremely talented, intelligent, knowledgeable and party's go-to man during a crisis.

More often than not, it used to be Jaitley who would face the media when tough questions had to be answered. Any serious allegation on the BJP, it used to be Jaitley who would respond, and he used explain things and put forth party's view with such a convincing logic that the allegation would seem trivial. Whether Hindi or English, Jaitley was fluent in both.

During Modi's first term as PM, when Congress levelled several allegations over the Rafale deal, it was Jaitley who bailed the government out with his astute response to every point raised by the grand old party.

Here are some of the quotation by BJP stalwart Arun Jaitley:

• "We as a government are entitled to be criticised."
• "Parliamentary obstructionism should be avoided. It is a weapon to be used in the rarest of the rare cases. Parliamentary accountability is as important as parliamentary debate. Both must coexist."
• "A single rate GST is not possible in India. We cannot have a tax system which has the same rate for a Hawai chappal and Mercedes car."
• "There are occasions when obstruction in Parliament brings greater benefits to the country.""We need to cut subsidy leakages, not subsidies themselves."
• "Educating and skilling our youth to enable them to get employment is the altar before which we must all bow."
• "We inherited a sentiment of, if I may say so, doom and gloom, and the investor community had almost written us off. We have come a long way since then."
• "While enacting the GST, neither the states nor Centre gave up their sovereignty. They have pooled their sovereignty to make joint decisions in indirect taxation,"
• "The old India was economically fragmented. New India will create one tax, one market, one nation. It will be in India where Centre and states work together towards the common goal of shared prosperity."
• "The government prevails on the CBI not to appeal. In the face of this attempt to scuttle the investigations, I think one's conscience should question as to the propriety of what the government and the (Congress) party have been doing and certainly not question the merits of the case."
• "India offered a 5% tax rate, lowest in the world, only to get people in the habit of paying taxes."
• "Far as the government's reform agenda is concerned, a series of measures have been enacted which should increase the supply potential of the economy."
• "If some student belonging to weaker section of society suffers distress, humanity says it must be addressed."