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Maran to keep away from active politics

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

In a surprise move, with wider ramifications for the ruling DMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu, and the Vajpayee Government at the Centre, Union Industry and Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran has announced his decision to stay away from active politics.

However, he will continue as a minister, without getting involved in the day-to-day affairs of the DMK, where his star and role have been on the ascendancy with those of maternal uncle and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, who took over the party leadership after the exit of the late C N Annadurai..

Maran's decision was made known through news agency reports, quoting the minister. "I have nothing more to add now," Maran told agency sources, to whom the call was believed to have been made at his instance.

Maran has been staying in Madras over the Tamil New Year weekend, ahead of the assembly election process and the recessed session of Parliament, both of which are commencing on Monday. While Maran's announcement will have an impact on the DMK's election strategy and scope, it will also be raised in Parliament, where the Congress-led Opposition is out to embarrass the Vajpayee Government and the BJP-NDA at every turn.

Maran attributed his decision to health reasons. So did his senior ministerial colleague and DMK leader, T R Baalu, who was despatched by Karunanidhi. With Baalu at his meeting with Maran, just a couple of houses away from Karunanidhi's Gopalapuram residence was the chief minister's wife, Dhayalu Ammal.

"Maran's decision is based purely on health reasons and he will be participating in the party's election rally in the city on Saturday evening," Baalu declared after the discussions. But the surprise with which the DMK leadership and the cadres alike received the announcement betrayed motives beyond health, which became a grave source of concern in Maran's case a few months back. So did the presence of Dhayalu Karunanidhi, who had obviously been despatched by the chief minister, and also that of the latter, soon afterwards.

Indications are that Maran was peeved at being side-lined in the election process involving the DMK, its choice of allies and party candidates. According to sources, he felt that Karunanidhi's mayoral son, M K Stalin, was getting more importance in the party's scheme of things, at his expense. Sources also speak of Karunanidhi having advised his nephew to lie low, given the chief minister's advancing age, and Maran's health.

Apart from what may be interpreted as succession war that is now seen as gripping the DMK, Maran, as a Dravidian ideologue, is said to be upset over the one-time 'caste-less party' coming to court casteist outfits in a very big way for the assembly elections. While concurring with Karunanidhi's decision on large-scale induction of new faces in the assembly elections, Maran reportedly wanted them to be well-respected professionals like doctors and lawyers, who are well respected in their localities - and not personal loyalists of Stalin, his cousin.

Maran has publicly criticised state party ministers and legislators, both in the DMK and outside, for their insensitivity to the common man's problems, reported inefficiency and alleged corruption.

He had reportedly drawn a parallel with the proclaimed efficiency in the Karunanidhi administration, attributing it to the near-apolitical approach of the state's bureaucracy, which has been given a free hand for most parts.

In this context, the Maran camp refers to the result-oriented, apolitical expectations of the 'new generation' voters, who "appreciate the professionalised administration of the Karunanidhi Government, vis-à-vis the erstwhile Jayalalitha dispensation".

It is this constituency that they want to be addressed by the DMK's choice of candidates, which they say "is not reflected by the DMK's draft list of candidates, where personal loyalty, and not personal quality, seems to have weighed in the selection".

For all this, however, DMK cadres are upset over Maran going public on his reservations, and also its very timing. "For one thing, it comes just three weeks ahead of the elections, when the voters are seen as getting over the shock-value of the MDMK's last-minute exit from the DMK combine. More importantly, coming as it does on the Tamil New Year Day, that too, hours before Karunanidhi was to announce the DMK's candidates at a well-publicised rally, Maran's announcement is not only shocking, but also 'un-Dravidian like' in a cadre-based party whose brain, he was allowed to be despite the presence of equally, if not more qualified, theoreticians and think-tanks," says a senior party leader.

However, even this source concedes the 'inadvertent slip-up' in the publicity material on the evening's rally, appearing in the day's morningers. Unlike in the past, DMK treasurer and State Electricity Minister Arcot N Veerasamy's name appeared a rung above that of Maran, after those of Karunanidhi and DMK General Secretary K Anbazhagan. Maran had to share the fourth-rung space with former Union minister and dissident TMC leader P Chidambaram, to be followed immediately by that of Stalin.

But for the not-so-numerically-strong Maran camp in the DMK, "it was more than inadvertency". According to them, "Nothing in the DMK is done by accident, or without the approval of Karunanidhi, not even the designing of publicity material. And that should explain a lot."

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