In last Cabinet meeting, Maran opted out of discussion on FM

NEW DELHI: Dayanidhi Maran, who resigned on Friday on the issue of corruption, briefly recused himself from his last meting of the Union Cabinet when it was discussing guidelines for rollout of the third phase of FM radio network.

Maran, who had arrived five minutes into the meeting, got up to leave when the proposal for FM Phase-3 came up, citing conflict of interest because of his family's interests in the business. The outgoing textiles minister joined the meeting when the discussions had moved on to other issues on the agenda.

Sources in the Cabinet said Maran had looked slightly tense and at times fidgety. Soon afterwards, he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to put in his papers.

Maran's recusal puzzled many of his colleagues because not many in the Cabinet have excused themselves citing the "conflict of interest" constraint. In fact, sources said Maran himself participated in the Cabinet deliberations on Headend-in-the-sky (HITS), a rival technology to DTH which the Marans' Sun Direct provides. In fact, C Sivasankaran's allegation is that Maxis invested approximately Rs 600 crore through its subsidiary Astro into Sun Direct in return for the role that Maran as telecom minister played in forcing the sale of Aircel to the Malaysian company.

Sources in the Cabinet claimed that Maran had lobbied opinion in the government when HITS was being debated.

In an earlier instance, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, who happens to be the chairman of International Cricket Council, strongly argued for a tax waiver for the cricketing body when it hosted the World Cup in India. Pawar's advocacy prevailed in the face of opposition from senior colleagues.

Unlike in the West, conflict of interest has rarely deterred politicians from espousing their business interests on the floor of the House, in the meetings of parliamentary panels or directly with the government. Recently, environment minister Jairam Ramesh had written to the Speaker to complain about lobbying by lawmakers for their businesses.

On an earlier occasion, the then vice-president B S Shekhawat had restrained the promoter of Kingfisher Airlines from raising an issue concerning aviation business.