Dayanidhi Maran
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| Dayanidhi Maran | |
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| Constituency | Chennai Central |
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| Born | 5 December 1966 Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India |
| Political party | DMK |
| Spouse | Priya Dayanidhi Maran |
| Children | 1 son and 1 daughter |
| Residence | Chennai |
| As of September 22, 2006 Source: [1] |
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Dayanidhi Maran (Tamil: தயாநிதி மாறன்) (born December 5, 1966, Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India) is a member of parliament in India’s 14th Lok Sabha from Madras Central constituency. Till May 2007 he was Minister of Communications and IT in the Union Cabinet.
He is the son of Late Mr.Murasoli Maran and the grandnephew of DMK president M Karunanidhi. He is the younger brother of Kalanidhi Maran, the founder and managing director of Sun Network, the group that owns and operates the largest number of satellite television channels in southern India in four languages. He is a graduate in economics.
Contested as a Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Party candidate to the 14th Lok Sabha from Central Chennai Constituency in Chennai in the State of Tamil Nadu in Parliamentary Elections held in April – May 2004 and elected as a Member of Parliament by winning with a margin of over 1,34,000 votes and securing over 62% of the votes polled. Appointed as Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology w.e.f. 26.05.2004.
As of 2004, he was an Indian millionaire having declared assets of 16 million Indian rupees (approx. 360,000 US dollars).
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[edit] Achievements
Dayanidhi Maran reduced the mobile and landline call rates drastically during his tenure as Union IT and Communications minister. He brought in investments well in excess of $30b for the IT sector alone and set the ball rolling for making India a chip manufacturing hub. [1]
[edit] Controversy
Dayanidhi Maran has been accused of demanding the Tatas 33.33% shares from the Tata-Rupert Murdoch DTH project (Tata Sky) for the Sun Network. In reply, he has asked the news papers which have published the report to apologize and threatened to go to court seeking compensation of Rs. 1 crore for personality damage from Indian Express, Thina Mani and Jaya TV. But he did not pursue the matter further.[citation needed]
In May 2007 the Tamil daily newspaper owned by Sun, Dinakaran, published a survey whose results declared that 70% of the people of Tamil Nadu favoured Karunanidhi's younger son M.K. Stalin as his likely successor as against 2% for Stalin's elder brother M.K. Azhagiri. This resulted in M.K.Azhagiri's supporters burning down the office of Dinakaran in the city of Madurai that resulted in the death of 3 employees and injuries to several others.
These series of events eclipsed the celebrations arranged to felicitate Karunanidhi who was at the time about to complete 50 years as a member of the State Assembly in Tamil Nadu; as a result of the embarrassment, the party mounted pressure to have Maran removed from his position as Union Minister. The Prime Minister refused to dismiss him, and the situation was not resolved till Dayanidhi himself resigned on the 13th of May. [2]
[edit] References
- ^ Maran quits Cabinet after DMK rap. Ibn Live (2007-05-13).
- ^ Maran quits Cabinet after DMK rap. Hindustan Times (2007-05-13).
