'Maran had said that he himself would prove his innocence. He will take the necessary course of action. I do not have anything more to add to this,' said Karunanidhi on Wednesday morning.
In a further sign of the rift within the Karunanidhi family, the DMK patriarch has washed his hands off his grand-nephew and the Union textile minister Dayanidhi Maran, who is entangled in the 2G spectrum and private telephone exchange scams.
“Maran had said that he himself would prove his innocence. He will take the necessary course of action. I do not have anything more to add to this,” said Karunanidhi on Wednesday morning.
Maran had claimed his innocence in response to reports about the functioning of a BSNL telephone exchange with 323 lines from his Chennai residence during his tenure as the union telecommunications minister from 2004 to 2007. “If I have done wrong, I am ready to face any punishment,” an upset Maran had told reporters last Thursday.
“They have questioned not only my integrity, but my party’s and family’s integrity,” Maran said last week.
N Murugan, former IAS officer and a close confident of the Marans (Dayanidhi and Kalanidhi) told DNA that Karunanidhi’s reaction on Maran was surprising. “While he came out in the open in support of his daughter Kanimozhi and A Raja when their names were mentioned in connection with the 2G scam, he has not opened his mouth in favour of Dayanithi. This is at the instance of other family members,” said Murugan. The ‘other family members’ here are his third wife Rajathi Ammal and daughter Kanimozhi who have been pressuring him to dump the Maran brothers.
Another reason could be the fact that while the DMK chief’s daughter is in Tihar Jail, Maran hasn’t been arrested as yet, said Murugan.
Sources close to Karunanidhi claim he was upset by the terms used by Maran during his interaction with the media at Chennai airport. Maran had called himself a political untouchable after he was dropped from the cabinet in 2007, owing to disputes between him and the Karunanidhi clan. It was Karunanidhi’s insistence that Maran was dropped from the cabinet. “Karunanidhi had given strict instructions to Congress leaders not to entertain the Maran brothers. The Congress had to obey him as the UPA government was surviving on the support extended by the DMK,” said the source.
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