Ramanisblog

Tag: Murasoli Maran

  • Karunanidhi Arrest Unpublished Video

     

    On 30 June 2001, Karunanidhi, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, was arrested along with Central Ministers Murasoli Maran andT.R. Baalu. 

     

    I was in Chennai then.

     

    Early morning , I heard a loud wailing from my neighbor’s house, with shout’,

     

    ‘They are killing me’

     

    I rushed out fearing the worst, only to find,

     

    Karunanidhi weeping and shouting like a man possessed and insane on SUN TV.

     

    This was the drama he was enacting  on his arrest.

     

    The vent was filmed in such a fashion as if it was scripted.

     

    Karunanidhi and Co were shouting that the Police were arresting them without prior intimation.

     

    If it is true, how come the Crew of SUN Network was in full force and filming the whole event from vantage points?

     

    My posting of this instance is that a New unpublished Video of the incident.

     

    One can see how a Union Minister in the Central Government Behaves with a Police Officer.

     

    The only polite word used by a Lady was , where is the warrant?’

     

    You may be see rowdy behavior all around.

     

    Finally exasperated, the Police gave back.

     

     

    The Unpublished Video  Click this Link.

     

    Background.

     

    On 30 June 2001, Karunanidhi, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, was arrested along with Central Ministers Murasoli Maran andT.R. Baalu. This event marked the first incident in the history of Independent India that a Central Cabinet Minister was arrested. The incident began when the seventy-eight-year-old former Chief Minister was taken from his residence. Within hours, images of the arrest were broadcast on Sun TV and other network stations.[1] Footage shown on Sun TV saw him continuously resist arrest….

     

    Reports indicate that at 1:30 am on 30 June, Karunanidhi was asleep in the upstairs bedroom of his home when the police broke open the door and asked Karunanidhi to get dressed. The police cut the telephone lines to the house. A television clip showed Karunanidhi falling down and being shoved, pushed, beaten and lifted by police officers in the house. Murasoli Maran, who went to rescue him, was also attacked and arrested when he resisted the arrest of the ex-chief minister. Maran, who was sick from his heart with apacemaker, was admitted to Apollo Hospital after his arrest.[4] T.R.Balu and thousands of DMK cadres were arrested. M.K.Stalin surrendered before a Magistrate.[5] Prime MinisterVajpayee condemned the arrest and demanded a report from chief secretary and Governor.[6][7] The arrest was condemned by many groups across the political spectrum[8]including both human rights groups and the Indian National Congress, otherwise known as a political ally of the AIADMK.

     

    *This version is being questioned.Please check wiki Talk section.

     

     

     

    Related articles
    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Coalgate and 2G’ Similar If Not Identical Scam Operational Details

    'ManMohan Singh' jpg
    ManMohan Singh

    The similarities between the Coal Scam and the @2G are so similar that it can be safely assumed the that 2G was a trail run to perfect the art of stealing from the exchequer without being accountable, hiding behind ‘notes’ bypassing the channels and keeping the Committee on the auction of the  Coal for five years, while the allocation spree was indulged in.

    Consider these facts.

    Like Telecommunication, Coal is a Union Subject.

    2 G had an ally heading the Ministry, with Congress holding the Minister of State slot.

    2 G had Murasoli Maran ,later A.Raja as the Telecom Ministers.

    Coal had Shibu Soren as the Union Minister of Coal and Dasari Narayana Rao as Minister of State.

    As in 2G,  ” the draft Cabinet note proposing auctioning of coal blocks, prepared on the instructions of the PM, was amended about half-a-dozen times, ostensibly to address the concerns of those who were opposed to auctioning. But each time the note was amended, a new litany of objections were raised”.

    A convenient ploy for the Prime Minister to defend himself later by saying he ‘instructed’ to follow the rules!

    In the case of the 2 G there was no objection to allocation from the States, while there were objections from the BJP ruled States,from Vasundhare Raje Scindia and Chattisgarh, which of course, were ignored.

    So was the objection by Murli Manohar Joshi  in his letter dated 2 December 2007 and later as the Head of The Joint parliamentary Committee ,just as Sushma Swaraj has done in 2G.

    Not that the Regional satrap Soren was The Minister for Coal and stooges of Karunanidhi of DMK for Telecom.

    In the early days of 2G, TRAI and Ministry of Telecom advised for auction , pointing out the market value of the Service.

    In the case of Coal.it was , then coal secretary PC Parakh 9at the time of UPA-I)

    Following Parakh’s vehement opposition to this method, the UPA announced the auction policy in 2004 but didn’t operationalise it until 2010

    “Parakh had informed the PM that the extant system under which a screening committee headed by the coal secretary with representatives from various ministries, State-owned corporations and state governments allocated captive coal blocks, was arbitrary, opaque and prone to corruption. More importantly, he told the PM that there was a substantial difference between the price of coal supplied by Coal India Limited and the cost of coal produced through captive mining, and thus, parties with captive blocks were making windfall gains.’

    On 28 June 2004, Parakh, in a consultative meeting with stakeholders, including industry and consumer forums, made a strong pitch for linking the allocation of coal blocks with a market-driven economy. Between 1992 and 2004, on an average, three or four captive coal blocks were allocated to major steel, cement or power companies every year through the screening committee system.”

    Non serious players, as in 2G, had entered the field like Jagathrakshakan’s J’R’Power P.’ltd which was five days old when it signed an MOU with Puduchery Investment Corporation(please read my blog on this).

    As in 2G . the Coal Blocks were allotted at a fraction of the market price.

    “while between 2004 and 2009, the UPA kept deferring the auction policy, it also went on an unprecedented allocation binge. As many as 155 precious coal blocks with billions of tonnes of coal reserves were allocated at a fraction of their true market worth in a span of five years (76 were allocated to private companies, and the rest went to public sector enterprises). The circumstances, as we will later see, suggest that this was done as per an elaborate conspiracy hatched between decision-makers and coal allottees.”

    In 2G ,the BSNL was made to suffer while these shady Companies were brought in to make money ,in Coal

    ‘More than 80 percent of the allottees have not yet started producing coal from their respective blocks. This led to a bizarre scenario where on the one hand, the government acted with unprecedented haste in allocating these blocks, and on the other, it did precious little to ensure that the allottees started producing coal from their respective mines and used it for the designated end use like producing power, steel, cement, etc. The government has now set up a committee to identify how many operators have deliberately defaulted in starting the coal production work and how many got stuck on account of bona fide delays in land acquisition, forest and environmental clearance or approval of mining plan. The biggest rationale of the government behind captive coal block allocation was to enhance domestic coal production capacity.”

    “The draft report of the CAG has pegged the total loss of revenue from this misallocation between Rs 6.31 lakh crore and Rs 10.67 lakh crore. While the windfall gain made by private companies stands between Rs 2.94 lakh crore and Rs 4.79 lakh crore, TEHELKA has learnt from its sources that the final CAG report has pegged the undue gain made by private operators between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh crore.”

    The difference is the  size of the scam.

    http://www.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne110812Coverstory2.asp

    Couple of things we noticed in 2G seems to be missing as i had indicated in my earlier blogs.

    -Radia type operator.

    -CAG Report came later ,after Radia tapes.

    -Middlemen details

    -the money  trail.

    I am sure it will follow.

    .

    Related articles

  • 2G scam Trail to DMK,Kalaingnar TV.

    Additional supportive Story for my blogs on 2 G,Corruption/India.

    A Spiral Of Proxies

    How the scam landed at Karunanidhi’s doorstep

    1. Dynamix  Realty, owned by 2G beneficiary DB Realty, transfers Rs 209.25 crore in an unsecured loan to Kusegaon Fruits & Vegetables, now known as Kusegaon Realty
    2. Kusegaon Realty transfers Rs 206.25 crore as a loan to Cineyug Films
    3. Cineyug in turn gives an unsecured loan to Kalaignar TV
    4. Cineyug says Kalaignar TV has returned the money

    Why DB Lent Only To Kalaignar TV? Questions:

    • Is DB Realty also a money-lending company?
    • How much have DB Realty or its subsidiaries lent to companies/ individuals in the past?
    • Why did it choose to lend money to the just-born Kalaignar TV?
    • Were the promoters/ shareholders of Kalaignar TV aware of the loan advanced to them?
    • Is the transaction reflected in DB Realty’s balance-sheet?
    • Why was a proper deal not hammered out before the money was lent?

    No one is brave enough to hint at, leave alone name, possible recipients. But there’s a ballpark kickback figure being bandied about—Rs 2,400 crore, drawn in equal share from six companies. It’s said most of the money was routed through time-tested banking channels used for shady deals. According to a source, the investigating agencies have got on the trail and are probing the accounts of Kalaignar TV, and DB Realty, a beneficiary of Raja’s 2G largesse that made a roundabout, unsecured loan of Rs 206 crore to the former. The channel was started when relations between the first family of the DMK and the Marans soured. With offices at the DMK headquarters in Anna Arivalayam, Chennai, it was positioned to take on the mighty Maran-owned Sun TV.

    Nearly 60 per cent of the shares in the TV channel are held by Dayaluammal, the second wife of Karunanidhi and mother of M.K. Stalin and M.K. Azhagiri. Twenty per cent is held by Kanimozhi, and another 20 per cent by Sharad Kumar, the managing director. Amritham Periyanayagam, brother of the late Murasoli Maran, is on the board of directors. “That Kalaignar TV received this loan (from DB Realty) makes one wonder if Karunanidhi was aware of Raja’s telecom dealings,” says the source.

    What has appeared in the media so far is quite baffling: both Dayaluammal and Kanimozhi have said they knew nothing about the unsecured loan from DB Realty through a three-fold transaction involving companies in which it had stakes. “It’s hard to believe that such a loan was secured without shareholders holding 80 per cent even knowing,” says M.R. Venkatesh, a Chennai-based chartered accountant who has written books on corruption and the failure of India’s financial sentinels. Unsecured loans, according to Venkatesh, are a standard route taken by many business houses to legitimise illegal transactions. Such loans are never paid back, and the lender, over a period of time, writes them off as bad debts.

     

    Also worth examining is the company that lent the money, through a web of other companies, mainly its subsidiaries. Chartered accountants say it is questionable for a realty firm listed in the stockmarket as dealing in real estate to loan money through routing agents, or some sort of subsidiaries, which on paper may claim to be in the lending business. They say it would be worth examining whether DB Realty and other companies linked to it have offered such loans before—if there’s a record of such transactions. Also worth investigating, they say, is why DB Realty lent money to Kalaignar TV alone, and moreover, through a process that put it at two removes from the ultimate transaction—money moved from DB Realty to Kusegaon Fruits & Vegetables, on to Cineyug, and then to the channel.

    Venkatesh points out that, according to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) 2002, transactions involving “politically exposed persons” ought to come under even more stringent levels of scrutiny—which should have been the case with Kalaignar TV transactions, patronised by a political party and the family that controls that party.

    Perhaps in the coming days, all this—the transaction and how and why it did not come under the authorities’ scanner—will come to light. Kalaignar TV is said to have returned the loan with interest—some say after things got hot, at eight per cent—presumably to avoid questions during the investigation. But it has inadvertently betrayed the nexus.

    It is also interesting that Kalaignar TV was announced in June 2007, apparently with a paid-up capital of Rs 1 crore, and was set up at record speed—in about three months. Around that time, Raja, in the ministry of communications and IT, was seen to be in a tearing hurry, bending rules and doling out favours to various companies, even permitting real estate companies to turn telecom operators. On September 24, 2007, he issued a controversial press release announcing the cut-off date for issuing 2G licenses on a dubious first-come-first-served method, and in the first week of October, he allotted dual licences (for both CDMA and GSM technologies) to three companies—Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and Sistema Shyam. This was done at 2001 rates, and without approval from the Union cabinet.

    Given all this, the big question in Chennai political circles now is whether ‘spectrum money’ was even deployed to launch Kalaignar TV. A television professional points out that within weeks of its launch, Kalaignar TV was picking up popular and big-budget films like Rajnikant’s Sivaji and Kamalahaasan’s Dashavataram. “Given the limited size of their authorised and paid-up capital, and given the fact that TV channels take a long time to make profits—at least three years—it was most astonishing that Kalaignar TV could go on such an expensive buying spree,” he says. Though Kalaignar TV was doing this to compete with the rival Sun TV, rumours gained ground about how the operation was being bankrolled, and by whom. Kalaignar TV managing director Sharad Kumar was not available for comment.

     

    “People are disgusted and angry. They’ll vote the DMK out. Also, the factions in the party may cause problems.”Cho Ramaswamy, Political Commentator

    There are also a lot of questions being asked about some dubious real estate investments. Talk is that some of the spectrum kickback money may have gone into the purchase of hotels and a mall in prime localities of Chennai; into properties in Ooty, the Nilgiris, Dubai, Singapore and Malaysia; into a logistics company operating at the Chennai and Tuticorin ports; and even into mining interests in India and abroad.

     

    “All of these are unverified at the moment, but if the Enforcement Directorate makes up its mind, it’s not very difficult to winnow the chaff,” says the editor of a Tamil publication. He also says Rajathiammal owns a furniture shop, which until recently was looked after by a person now into real estate business. It may also prove useful to look into this person’s dealings and that of a Malaysian doctor, he says.

    With assembly elections scheduled in Tamil Nadu for May 2011, there are wider political ramifications of the talk of 2G kickbacks. Already the opposition parties feel that the “per-vote rate” in rural Tamil Nadu has gone up. “This whole crisis has created a sense of desperation in the DMK, and it will do all it can to win—and anyway it has money to spend,” says an opposition leader. But Cho Ramaswamy, a veteran political commentator, thinks otherwise: “There is anger and disgust among the people. They’ll vote the DMK out. Also, the DMK alliance itself could face problems; and factions within the party are a problem too. To retain autonomy, the DMK may undercut votes in Congress constituencies. Plus, Azhagiri may try to get his brother Stalin’s candidates defeated to gain control in the party,” he says.

    For now, Karunanidhi, the DMK patriarch, seems to have maintained a semblance of balance in the party and in his warring family. “As a clear signal to the rest in the clan, he has stood by Raja and Kanimozhi. Taking Kanimozhi along when he went to discuss the poll alliance with Sonia Gandhi in Delhi  recently was a clear message to Azhagiri that he must stay clear of this particular strand of the family. Azhagiri was making a lot of noise in January, but has quietened down now,” says a political observer. However, Raja and the Rajathiammal wing of the family carry an unenviable burden. If the DMK loses the elections, everybody knows at whose doorstep the blame will be laid.

    http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?270407

     

     

     

     

  • I came to Chennai with nothing,Karunanidhi-Figures don’t add up!

    Karunanidhi
    Image via Wikipedia

    Karunanidhi says he came to Chennai from Tiruvarur with nothing except a steel trunk.

    We know how much he was paid for script writing.

    Even top Stars like Sivaji/MGR got a maximum of 2 lakhs a film around 70’s.

    How come Karunanidhi has crores at stake in officially discloded ventures?

    Karunanidhi and DMK were  declared to have mastered Scientific Corruption’ by Sarkaria Commission.

    Story:

    It is said Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi gets Rs 45 lakh for every movie script. That he chose to make an asset disclosure when Ilaignan, his 75th film as writer, is due for release has been seen as the tactic: it was to distance himself from the spectrum scam. The Radia tapes have his third wife Rajathi talking about the purchase of a Rs 300-crore building in Chennai.

    In a 10-page emotion-tinged letter to DMK party workers released last week as a response to allegations of amassing wealth in the spectrum scam, Karunanidhi said: “I have already willed my house at Gopalapuram to be converted into a hospital for the poor. Apart from this, I have no other immovable property in my name nor have I added to any of my acquisitions in my long public life.” Referring to Sun TV Network getting consolidated under Kalanidhi Maran after the death of his nephew and former Union minister Murasoli Maran, the DMK leader said when the business was restructured and his family members withdrew from it, he was given Rs 100 crore” (as disinvestment proceeds), of which Rs 22.50 crore was paid as income tax and the remaining Rs 77.50 crore shared by his sons and daughters. “My share was Rs 10 crore, of which Rs 5 crore was placed in a fixed deposit,” he said.

    In November 2008, however, when Sun TV vacated the DMK building on Mount Road, Karunanidhi wrote to party workers, explaining the rift between him and the Marans, and revealing that the family got Rs 100 crore when his wife M.K. Dayalu offloaded her stake in the group. The next day, Sun TV Network Chairman Kalanidhi Maran told the press it was at Karunanidhi’s insistence that the group was restructured. He said charges were being levelled against them by Karunanidhi at the “instigation of selfish elements” in the family. 

    Now, the Radia tapes have revealed a new slant to the whole story of Dayalu’s Sun TV stake. It emerges from one conversation about the Sun TV deal that “Maran paid Rs 600 crore to Dayalu, Stalin’s mother”. The Red Herring prospectus filed by Sun TV Ltd with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, however, says Dayalu was holding 5.75 per cent of the shares. The total number of equity shares in her name as per the prospectus is 1,15,000. They were transferred on October 28, 2005 at Rs 3,173.04 per share, the document says. The total value of the shares is thus Rs 36.48 crore.

    And that’s where the arithmetic has question marks: How much did the Karunanidhi family get from the Marans in the Sun TV deal: Rs 100 crore as Karunanidhi says, Rs 600 crore as the Radia tapes say, or Rs 36 crore as the Red Herring prospectus indicates?

    http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/122819/Special%20Report/sun-tv-doesnt-add-up.html