Dayanidhi Maran: Ready to quit, won’t embarrass PM

Union minister for textiles Dayanidhi Maran said during his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday that he would resign “if push comes to shove”, sources said.

Mr Maran, who met Prime Minister Singh on Thursday, is facing allegations that he played a role in the Aircel-Maxis controversy.

He offered to put in his papers if that would save the Prime Minister from getting embarrassed, they added. “If push comes to shove, I will put in my papers,” Mr Maran said, according to sources.

Mr Maran, however, dismissed talk of his offering to resign as speculative, saying the meeting was routine: “It is nothing. I am a minister. The meeting was in connection with official work.”

Mr Maran was communications minister in the UPA-I government until he fell foul of the DMK leadership owing to feuding within the Karunanidhi family and was forced to step down.

A. Raja succeeded him in the ministry and continued to hold charge of the communications portfolio in the UPA-II government. The CBI arrested Mr Raja in early February this year for his alleged role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. In May the CBI arrested Rajya Sabha MP Kanimozhi, the daughter of DMK supremo M. Karuna-nidhi, in connection with the same scam.

Speculation about Mr Maran’s continuation grew after Mr C. Sivasankaran, the former owner and promoter of Aircel, claimed to the CBI that he was coerced into selling Aircel, with its eight licences, to Maxis by the current textiles minister.

During the height of the controversy, too, the DMK chief had not defended his grandnephew on the issue, which is a reflection of the power tussle within the DMK’s first family. All that Mr Karunanidhi said was that Mr Maran would defend himself against all the charges.

In another development, a group of DMK leaders met Ms Kanimozhi and A. Raja in Tihar jail. This assumes significance in the backdrop of conjecture that Maran may have to quit the Union Cabinet.

Those who met the two in jail are senior leaders T.R. Baalu, T.K.S. Elangovan, A.K.S Vijayan, former ministers K.N. Nehru, Paneer Selvam, Ms Poongothai, yesteryears actor Chandrasekar, Kani-mozhi’s husband Aravin-dan and son Aditya, and Raja’s wife Parameshwari.