New Delhi
Union Minister Arun Jaitley, who was recuperating after a surgery for kidney transplant, resumed charge of the Finance and Corporate Affairs ministries on Thursday. Jaitley, 65, who had stopped attending office to undergo a renal surgery on May 14, attended first-floor office in the North Block which has been renovated and sanitised to suit his present medical condition.
He was greeted by deputies and senior officials in both the ministries, including Finance Secretary Hashmukh Adhia.

He has started work after getting a clearance from his doctors, sources said, adding that he has also been advised to cut his public interaction to the minimum to protect him from contracting any infection. Visitors to his room are also expected to follow certain precautions, they added.

Earlier in the day, a communique from the Rashtrapati Bhavan said, “The President of India, as advised by the Prime Minister, has directed to assign the portfolios of the Minister of Finance and Minister of Corporate Affairs to Shri Arun Jaitley.”

Though the charge of his ministry was with Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal, Jaitley remained a minister without portfolio in the Narendra Modi government during the interim period. He has been the Finance Minister ever since the BJP came to power in May 2014 and has had also held additional charge of ministries of Defence and Information and Broadcasting.

During the break-period, he kept himself busy penning blogs on economic and political issues concerning the country and his party like the National Register for Citizens (NRC) in Assam, Emergency, no-confidence motion in Parliament, Rafale jet deal and the goods and services tax.

While he also participated in some events, like first anniversary of the GST launch, and interacted with ministry officials via video-conferencing after the surgery, his first public appearance was in Parliament for when he came to participate in the election for the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha.