Indian Minister of Textiles Dayanidhi Maran resigned Thursday following allegation that he arm-twisted Aircel owner C. Sivasankarn to sell his 74 percent stake to Maxis group of Malaysia, local media reported Friday.
Maran met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after a routine Cabinet meeting and submitted his resignation.
The meeting between Maran and Singh at the Prime Minister's 7 Race Course Road residence in New Delhi, which was the second one Thursday, lasted for five minutes after which he resigned.
He also met Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.
Singh and Sonia Gandhi spoke to Tamil Nadu-based Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) chief M. Karunanidhi Wednesday night about Maran. Karunanidhi reportedly gave the go-ahead before Maran resigned Thursday.
The Prime Minister also discussed Maran's alleged role in the Aircel-Maxis deal with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal and Attorney General Goolam E. Vahanvati separately.
Maran is the second minister and DMK leader to step down from the Cabinet after former telecom minister A. Raja for involvement in the 2G spectrum scam.
India's premier probe agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), indicted him for coercing a telecom firm in selling its stake to a Malaysia-based group in which Maran's brother is a stakeholder.
Maran was the country's Telecom Minister at the time when he allegedly arm-twisted Aircel owner C. Sivasankarn to sell his 74 percent stake to Maxis group of Malaysia, where a large Tamil community lives.
Maran's resignation came a day after the CBI told the country' s Supreme Court, which is monitoring the telecom scam, that its preliminary inquiry into the allegation of Sivasankaran suggested that Maran starved Aircel of new licenses to bully him into selling out.
Maran belongs to the ruling United Progressive Alliance's southern state of Tamil Nadu-based ally DMK.
India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said: "Maran's resignation has come very late. He should have morally resigned much before, especially after his role in the 2G scam surfaced."
The country's former Telecom Minister, A. Raja, who had last year resigned over the 40 billion U.S. dollars telecom scam, is currently in jail for allegedly selling spectrum at an undervalued rate to various telecom firms.
Editor: Zhang Xiang
English.news.cn 2011-07-08 09:52:52 FeedbackPrintRSS
NEW DELHI, July 8 (Xinhua)
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