CBI will question Maran soon followed by his resignation

A day after Maran was nailed by the CBI in the 2G spectrum scam, today the DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran resigned from the post of Textiles Minister from the Union Cabinet. Today he tendered his resignation to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The PM stepped into the issue a day after the CBI in its status report in the 2G spectrum allocation scam pointed its fingers at Maran for delaying of Telecom Company Aircel's application for 2G license. Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalitha also on Wednesday asked for the resignation of the DMK Leader Dayanidhi Maran. She also stated that it was high time that the PM dropped him from the cabinet. BJP also demanded the PM to drop him from the cabinet. Party spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman told the reporters that "Maran's position in the cabinet has become untenable and he has to resign". The DMK Chief is not in the best of terms with the Congress over the arrest and jailing of his daughter Kanimozhi and that of his trusted man A Raja. Dayanidhi Maran will be soon questioned by the CBI in connection with his alleged role in coercing former Aircel Chief C Sivasankaran to sell his stake to a Malaysia-based group. Maran who resigned today from the post of Textime Minister today will be questioned on the charges levelled against him by Sivasankaran and spectrum policy changes made during his tenure during UPA-1. Already a preliminary investigation on three telecom ministers namely Pramod Mahajan, Arun Shourie and Dayanidhi Maran is already underway. The agency is examining final transanctions of Sun TV, owned by Maran family, and Malaysia-based Maxis. The agency is also looking over to the various aspects of takeover of Aircel by Maxis group. According to the laid down procedure, CBI registers a PE upon receiving a complaint and when anything substantial is discovered this inquiry is converted into a regular case. The agency has registered a PE against "unknown persons" on Supreme Court's directive to probe there was any anomaly in "first-come-first-served" policy for spectrum allocation. Reported by,         AR