New Delhi - India's Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran has quit the cabinet after his party forced his resignation following his alleged involvement in a leadership struggle, media reports said Monday. Maran, who belongs to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which governs the southern Tamil Nadu state and is a partner of India's ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), sent his resignation letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the NDTV network reported.
The move came after a meeting of the DMK presided over by its chief, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, also Maran's grand-uncle, on Sunday night asked the UPA government to remove Maran from the cabinet.
The DMK also decided to issue a show-cause notice to Maran asking him why he should not be expelled from the membership of the party.
"If expelling me from the post and primary membership makes the DMK family happy, I have nothing more to say," he said in the statement to the NDTV network.
"For the last three years I have served the people of Tamil Nadu and the nation to the best of my ability and I got this chance from the DMK party to which I give my heartfelt thanks," Maran said.
The trouble for Maran began after supporters of MK Azhagiri, Karunanidhi's elder son, attacked and set fire to a newspaper office owned by the Maran family resulting in the deaths of three employees.
The supporters were angered over a report in the Dinakaran newspaper which said that Azagiri was favoured only by 2 per cent of the population as a successor to Chief Minister Karunanidhi.
The controversial poll on Karunanidhi's successors that infuriated Azhagiri and led to violence in Madurai city cost Maran his job, the NDTV said in its report.
Senior DMK politicians viewed it as an attempt to create a division between Azhagiri and his younger brother MK Stalin.
"Dayanidhi Maran was no contender at all. Stalin's position as successor to Karunanidhi has been accepted in the party," political analyst, Cho Ramaswamy told the CNN-IBN network.
"But he (Maran), with the recent popularity and publicity, thought he could create confusion about the succession with his media," Ramaswamy added.
Ramaswamy said the Marans overestimated their strength. "They not only thought that they could take on Karunanidhi's sons, but also Karunanidhi himself. It's obvious that he (Karunanidhi) has been hurt by the behaviour of the Marans."
Maran, 41, who has been at the head of India's fast growing telecom and IT sector, was considered one of the most capable ministers in the Manmohan Singh government. His resignation has not gone down well with the IT and telecom industry.
Maran has taken some major initiatives such as bringing down telecom tariffs, hiking the foreign investment limit in the telecom sector to 74 percent, growth of broadband in the country and introducing policies to focus on rural connectivity.
"Maran's resignation will put brakes on the growth of this industry," a chief executive of a leading mobile firm told the IANS news agency on condition of anonymity.
