Arun Jaitley - Legal Career

Legal Career

He has been practising law before the Supreme Court of India and several High Courts in the country since 1977. He is a designated Senior Advocate. He was appointed Additional Solicitor General by the V. P. Singh government in 1989 and did the paperwork for the investigations into the Bofors scandal. His clients cover the political spectrum from Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal to Madhavrao Scindia of the Indian National Congress to L. K. Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has authored several publications on legal and current affairs. He has presented a Paper on Law relating to Corruption and Crime in India before the Indo-British Legal Forum. He was a delegate on behalf of the Government of India to the United Nations General Assembly Session in June 1998 where the Declaration on Law relating to Drugs and Money Laundering was approved.

Arun Jaitley has also appeared on behalf of giant multinational corporations such as Pepsi and Coca Cola in various cases in India. For example, he represented Pepsi Foods (the plaintiffs) in a case against Coca Cola alleging that "Coke has been trying to disrupt its operations by offering ‘illegal inducements’ to its marketing consultants, senior executives, franchisee employees, distributors and institutional retailers." After having been the Minister of Law, Justice and Company Affairs, Arun Jaitley represented Pepsi in 2002 in a case where the Supreme Court of India admonished and imposed stiff fines on 8 companies for painting advertisements on ecologically fragile rocks along the Manali-Rohtang road in the Himalayas. "The companies were also issued show-cause notices as to why exemplary damages should not be imposed on them for indulging in environmental vandalism." In 2006, Jaitley argued on behalf of Pepsico India Holdings Pvt Ltd., challenging the orders of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to discontinue the use of adjectives such as 'Pure', 'Crisp', 'Refreshing', 'Purified' and 'Purity Guranteed' on the labels of its water bottle, as well as to stop using art-works of snow-clad mountains in the labels of the bottled water as they were deemed "misleading the customers". In 2004, Arun Jaitley appeared on behalf of Coca Cola in a case at the Rajasthan High Court. Chief Justice Anil Dev Singh and Justice K.S. Rathore had directed “the respondent companies, namely PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, and all other manufacturers of carbonated beverages and soft drinks, to disclose the composition and contents of the products, including the presence, if any, of pesticides and chemicals, on the bottle, package or container, as the case may be”. The order of October 8 had come in response to a public interest litigation filed by advocate Swati Bhati in March 2003 on behalf of the Youth Welfare Society, Jaipur. During the hearing, the court noted that the advocates for the cola companies had argued that "small traces of DDT and other pesticides are not harmful to the health of the consumers". The advocates also argued that such directives, "was in the domain of the legislature and the executive, not the court."