Dayanidhi Maran: Difference between revisions

Dayanidhi Maran (Tamil: தயாநிதி மாறன்) (born December 5, 1966, Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India) is a member of parliament in India’s 15th Lok Sabha from Chennai Central constituency. He was also a member of Parliament in 14th Lok sabha holding Minister of Communications and IT in the Union Cabinet till May 2007.

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.

He is an Amateur Radio Operator. His HAM Radio Callsign is VU2DMK. He went to School at Don Bosco, Egmore, Chennai.

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^[update], he was an Indian millionaire having declared assets of 16 million Indian rupees (approx. 360,000 US dollars).

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. During his period the growth of Internet Subscribers including Broadband is higher.
Growth of Internet Subscribers Including Broadband
^[1]

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. B

In May 2007 the Tamil daily newspaper owned by his brother Kalanithi 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 resulted in Karunanidhi removing Maran 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]

• QRZ Ham Radio Callsign Database - VU2DMK
  
• National Institute of Amateur Radio