Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi Maran, owners of south India’s largest media house, suffered a major setback on Wednesday with the Madras High Court refusing to stay the March 31 order by the Enforcement Directorate attaching the properties owned by the brothers.
The ED action was in connection with the Aircel-Maxis case which shot into fame with a startling revelation by Sivasankaran, a Chennai-based businessman, that he was forced by Dayanidhi Maran the then Union Telecommunication and IT Minister to part with the former’s share in Aircel to Ananthakrishnan, the Malaysia based owner of Maxis Communications. In return, Ananthakrishnan invested about Rs800 crore in the Sun Network, the Marans owned media conglomerate.
Justice M Sathyanarayanan said the High Court was not inclined to entertain the petition by the Marans as the case was being monitored by the Supreme Court. G Rajagoplan, the additional solicitor general, told the court that the Supreme Court was monitoring the developments in the case. He also brought to the attention of the High Court the observation made by the apex court that interventions by other courts would impeded the investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the ED.
The battery of legal luminaries including the Congress leader Kapil Sibal deployed by the Maran Brothers had argued before the High Court that the properties attached by the ED were acquired by the Marans much before the investigating agencies commenced their probe into the Aircel-Maxis case but the ASG, pointed out the blanket order imposed by the Supreme Court on any courts from entertaining petitions in all matters related to the 2G Spectrum and other cases.
The attachment of properties owned by the Maran brothers, who are the grand nephews of M Karunanidhi, the DMK patriarch, has cast a shadow on the future of Sun Group, South India’s largest satellite TV network and Sooryan FM Radio network. The immediate fall out is that the Maran brothers may not be able to participate in the auctioning of licences for FM radio stations in type-2 cities of th country.
The rumour going around in Tamil Nadu is that Sun TV, the leading Tamil satellite TV channel and Sun News, the 24X7 news channel may go off the air anytime now following reports that the Union Home Ministry may not renew the licence granted to them earlier.