Maran to come under CBI lens over Aircel Licence

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is getting ready to conduct enquiries against Union minister for textiles, Dayanidhi Maran, on allotment of certain telecom licences in 2006, when he was minister in charge there.

What the CBI is going to investigate is Maran’s alleged dealings with Tamil Nadu industrialist Sivasankaran, owner of Aircel mobile services. The charge is that the latter sought and got licences after routing investments amounting to Rs 700 crore in Sun TV and Sun Radio, owned by Dayanidhi Maran’s brother, Kalanidhi. The transaction had an intermediary, Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan, of the Maxis group.

Newsmagazine Tehelka, which originally made the claim, has been sued by Maran.

CBI spokesperson Dharini Mishra said: "CBI has already registered a preliminary enquiry on issues in 2G spectrum allocation between 2001-07 and is actively looking into the matter." According to the procedure, CBI registers a PE upon receiving any complaint and when anything substantial is discovered, this enquiry is converted into a ‘Regular Case’.

Maran issued a statement that he had not shown any favour to any company and nor had the exchequer lost any money in the grant of Unified Access Service Licences. He said only those companies that had a clean financial record were given licences, subject to conditions of adequate net worth, a healthy debt-equity ratio, etc.

There were queries about Aircel in the ministry even before he became minister in charge, he said. Licenses were given after all legal queries were satisfied. He said he was not a minister when the company invested in the Sun Group, having resigned before that. The company invested in the Sun Group in December 2007 and he resigned as minister in May 2007, he said.