Dayanidhi Maran vs Ratan Tata - Question of Ethics

At the time of writing this post, elections to TN Assembly is over and the state is eagerly awaiting the verdict.

Sometime during the heat of the campaign - roughly about 2 weeks before the elections - The New Indian Express published an exclusive report alleging that the Union Minister for IT & Communications - Dayanidhi Maran has pressurised Ratan Tata of Tata Group of Companies into selling 33% of Tata-Star DTH project to Sun TV group at a price significantly lower than the market rate. The newspaper alleged that the Union Minister for IT & Communications threatened Tata that the clearance for the latter's telecom projects would be at stake if the shares were not divested to Sun TV group in which the Minister happens to be a promoter and whose Chief Executive Kalanidhi Maran happens to be the Minister's own brother. The New Indian Express raised series of questions to Tata on this issue, who declined to comment.

While the above kicked of the storm in the electoral campaign along the expected lines, it was expected that there would be some detailed explanation from one of the parties or an exoneration/promise of inquiry by the Prime Minister. But more than 2 weeks after the report was published, no further information has come out. Dayanidhi Maran has denied the allegation as baseless and has threatened to file a law suit against the newspaper (or may be he has already filed one). Tata has not denied any of the allegations published by The New Indian Express. To add more spice to the issue, Ratan Tata wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a letter expressing his distress at the attitude of the Department of Communications in not responding to his letter of April 3. He also referred to his earlier correspondence of May 20, 2005 to Minister Dayanidhi Maran. It is to be noted that Ratan Tata did not specify anything about the above allegations to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister for his part has avoided the press since the controversy erupted and very diplomatically did not go any where near this topic when he campaigned for DMK led alliance in the State last week.

At the risk of sounding biased, this writer feels that the queries raised by The New Indian Express have raised serious questions about the constitutional propriety and political morality in the actions of the Union Minister for IT & Communications, Dayanidhi Maran. It is to be noted that when Dayanidhi Maran was appointed to head the Communications Ministry in 2004, there were widespread resentment against the move as it was a well known fact that Marans were the promoters of the Sun TV, whose business is being regulated by the Communications Ministry. Those murmurs started to gain credence when AIADMK affiliated Jaya TV was denied permission to start a news channel by the Communications Ministry while a Kerala based TV channel got the permission in a matter of days. Also, Raj TV - another competitor of Sun TV group was asked to discontinue broadcast of two of its channels over some technical violation, while such violations by other language channels were overlooked.

The issue of political morality is not confined to India alone. It is prevalent in many countries where parliamentary democracy is practised, especially in United Kingdom, whose model Indian Constitution has adopted. Based on the practices in the UK and other countries in dealing with this issue, India has constituted for each House of its Parliament, a Committee on Ethics. But unlike other countries, the above said committees lack authority. The Indian Parliament has failed to create an impartial authority to ensure ethical conduct of members and ministers. Few years back, there was a talk about empowering Lok Pal to deal with comlaints on unethical deeds, but nothing seem to have moved in that direction.

It is often said that when the Indian Constitution was drafted more than five decades ago, it was done with the thought that men of noble thoughts & impeccable integrity would be elected to the corridors of power and hence loopholes in the constitution were overlooked in the hope that they would never be traversed through. The law makers of the early days did live up to that hope. In 1951, when Congress MP - H.G.Mudgal was in the midst of an allegation for tabling questions for a remuneration (the earlier day version of 'cash for questions'), the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru did not have any hesitation in appointing a Parliament Committee headed by Tiruvellor Thattai Krishnamachari (known as TTK), that ruled his expulsion from the Parliament.

Incidentally, six years later the same T.T.Krishnamachari, who was the country's Finance Minister had to resign as Justice Chagla Commission held him (ir)responsible for asking LIC to buy shares in a Calcutta based Mundhra company. Party considerations did not prevent Prime Minister Nehru and the Congress members to appoint a commission and to uphold the judicial decision. (It is a different matter that TTK was back in the job as Finance Minister and was forced to resign again giving him the dubious distinction of being the only Indian Finance Minister to have been removed twice. More on that in a separate post.)

In 1987, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed the current Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram as the Union Minister of State for Textiles, the latter denied the post as he felt that would amount to constituional impropriety as some of his relatives were in the textile related businesses. Much later, in 1991 the very same Palaniappan Chidambaram resigned from the Union Ministry as he & his wife were shareholders in a company whose shares were dealt by Harshad Mehta, who was under investigation for the stock market scam of early 1990s. Ironically, there was no charge of any personal gain of any sorts for P. Chidambaram or his family in the above case.

Coming back to the Maran vs Tata issue, it would also do a world of good for Dayanidhi Maran to quit from the Union Cabinet and request a speedy, impartial investigation as Lal Krishna Advani did in 1996 when his name appeared in Hawala scam (LK Advani resigned as a Leader of Opposition and didn't contest in elections until his name was cleared in the Hawala case). If the charges raised by The New Indian Express are found to be baseless, it would not only boost Maran's political credibility, but would also give him a very legitimate reason to take the above newspaper to the cleaners, rather than firing of defamation threats.

As the above doesn't seem to happen, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must assume responsibility in seeing to that the charges are thoroughly investigated for he is the one who appointed Dayanidhi Maran as the Union Communications Minister. As done by Jawaharlal Nehru, Manmohan Singh must refer the matter to a public inquiry, which could be seen as a warning to errant administrators. Other wise, Manmohan Singh's image as one of the upfront politicians in the country would take a severe beating. So would be the confidence of the electorate on our much envied democratic setup.