DMK will not replace Maran, Raja in Cabinet

Sources reveals that DMK will not replace Maran, Raja in Cabinet. The DMK has lost two ministers
in the Cabinet in eight months, but sources
say the party is not considering replacing A
Raja or Dayanidhi Maran with other
candidates for now.
Mr Raja resigned in November, he has been
accused of corruption and of engineering
India's biggest swindle, the 2G telecom
scam; Mr Maran resigned yesterday, again
on the basis of corruption charges
pertaining to his stint as Telecom minister
before Mr Raja took over the ministry from
him in 2007.
Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee is
expected to meet DMK leader M Karunanidhi
tomorrow.
After Mr Maran quit as Union Textiles
Minister yesterday in Delhi, Mr Karunanidhi
told reporters in Chennai that he had not
sent a list of candidates to replace him to
Sonia Gandhi or the Prime Minister. His
comments came amidst speculation that
senior DMK leader TR Baalu would be
inducted into the cabinet at the next
reshuffle, expected shortly.
Mr Karunanidhi is Mr Maran's grand-uncle.
Sources close to the DMK President say that
for now, his priority remains his daughter,
Kanimozhi, who is in jail along with Mr Raja
for allegedly accepting a bribe along with
him from a company that won undue
favours when Mr Raja allotted mobile
network licenses and spectrum in 2008.
Kanimozhi was taken into Tihar Jail in Delhi
in May, a day after the DMK was routed in
the Tamil Nadu state elections. Mr
Karunanidhi was voted out as Chief Minister.
The DMK fought the election with the
Congress. The dismal performance of the
alliance and the arrest of Kanimozhi by the
CBI have been strangling the partnership
that Mr Karunanidhi holds with the Congress
at the Centre. With 18 Lok Sabha MPs, his
party is a formidable partner in the
Congress-led UPA coalition.
Sources say that in end-July, the DMK will
hold an executive meeting to decide
whether to continue its alliance with the
Congress.

2G scam: Dayanidhi Maran quits

Pushed to the wall after CBI named him in
the 2G spectrum allocation case, high-profile
textiles minister Dayanidhi Maran today
resigned from the Union cabinet, becoming
the second DMK casualty in the scam.
Forty-four-year-old Maran met Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh after a cabinet
meeting and tendered his resignation
following a word from DMK chief M
Karunanidhi, highly-placed sources said.
Maran's continuance in the cabinet became
untenable after the CBI in its status report
on the 2G scam case yesterday, charged him
with "forcing" a Chennai-based telecom
promoter C Sivasankaran to sell his stakes in
Aircel to a Malaysian firm in 2006 during his
tenure as telecom minister in UPA-I.
The prime minister is believed to have had a
word with DMK parliamentary party chief TR
Baalu this morning and conveyed to him
that the DMK leadership should be apprised
of the position that Maran cannot continue
in the cabinet.
Baalu, who is in Delhi, is understood to have
conveyed this to Karunanidhi who later
asked Maran to put in his papers.
It was business as usual for Maran in the
morning as he attended the Cabinet meeting
during which he abstained himself for a
brief while when the issue of licence for FM
channels came up.
He kept himself away on account of conflict
of interest because his brother Kalanidhi
Maran runs a media empire that includes FM
channels in various languages.
Maran went back home from the cabinet
meeting and returned later to give his
resignation to the prime minister on the
DMK chief's direction.
Maran, son of late Union minister Muralosi
Maran, is a grand nephew of Karunanidhi.
With this, Maran becomes the second DMK
minister to step down for alleged
involvement in 2G scam. Former telecom
minister A Raja was forced to resign in
November, 2010 when the CAG indicted him
in the scam.
Karunanidhi's daughter and DMK MP
Kanimozhi and Raja are currently in Tihar jail
for their alleged involvement in the scam.
This is the second time Maran is quitting the
cabinet. The first time he quit was in 2007
when the DMK decided to withdraw him
from the cabinet after differences cropped
up within the DMK's first family.
Later, he made a re-entry into the cabinet in
May, 2009 after the elections, but got only
the Textiles portfolio.
The CBI, in its report, also said that during
2004-07 when Maran was telecom minister,
Sivasankaran, was forced to sell the stake in
Aircel to a Malaysian firm Maxis Group.
There was intense speculation for the past
one month about Maran's continuance in
the Union Cabinet after reports alleging that
the family-owned Sun TV received pay-offs
from a Malaysian firm in return for the
spectrum alloted to it during Maran's tenure
surfaced.

CBI: Dayanidhi Maran a suspect in 2G scam case

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in
its status report to the Supreme Court on
Wednesday on the 2G scam has a pointed
finger at Dayanidhi Maran, now the textiles
minister, for sitting on Aircel's application
for a spectrum license as a consequence of
which it was sold to Malaysian company
Maxis.
The CBI also told an apex court bench of
justice GS Singhvi and justice AK Ganguly
that it needed time till Aug 31 to complete
its investigation in the 2G spectrum scam.
Though the report was presented in a
sealed envelope, the references to Maran
became clear during the reading of its
extracts by senior counsel KK Venugopal,
who appeared for the CBI. Maran held the
telecom portfolio 2004-07.
There are allegations that Maxis
Communication bought 74% stake in Aircel
and the company was later allotted more
circles to operate in.
Maxis Communication, through its
subsidiary Astro, then invested around
Rs.600 crore in Sun DTH belonging to the
Sun TV Network owned by Maran's family, it
has been alleged.
The CBI had April 2 filed its first chargesheet
in the 2G spectrum scam. The chargesheet
was filed in the special court of CBI judge
O.P. Saini.
It named former communications minister A
Raja, former telecom secretary Siddharth
Behura, Swan Telecom promoter Shahid
Usman Balwa, Raja's aide RK Chandolia,
Swan Telecom's Vinod Goenka, Unitech's
Wireless Sanjay Chandra and three
executives of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani
Group -- Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and
Surendra Pipara.
In its April 25 supplementary chargesheet,
the CBI named DMK chief M Karunanidhi's
daughter Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV
managing director Sharad Kumar as co-
conspirators after it traced an illegal money
trail of Rs 214 crore in the scam.
The supplementary chargesheet also named
Karim Morani as well as Asif Balwa and
Rajeev Agarwal of Kusegaon Realty.