DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, had told US diplomats that the Dinakaran newspaper’s controversial opinion poll in 2007 was only a reason to force Dayanidhi Maran out of the Union Cabinet and that the party had been “waiting for an opportunity” to remove him, a WikiLeaks cable has revealed.
The family feud after the opinion poll that rocked the DMK led to attacks on the newspaper’s Madurai office and resulted in the death of three workers.
The cable titled ‘Chief Minister’s Daughters to Upper House, The DMK’s fresh face in Delhi,’ was issued on June 8, 2007.
When officers of the consulate in Chennai met Kanimozhi after Maran’s resignation from the Union Cabinet, she defended Karunanidhi’s decision, the cable said. “Kanimozhi justified her father’s decision saying that the party had been ‘waiting for an opportunity’ to bring down Maran, which his family provided through the controversial opinion poll in its newspaper,” the cable read. But if not the opinion poll, what could have been the real reason for Karunanidhi’s angst?
The cable quoted another political insider as saying that the DMK officials felt “Maran was too quick to try to bypass DMK authorities by appealing to the Congress leadership in Delhi, including to Sonia Gandhi.” Political insiders further said “there was bitterness between the Karunanidhi family and the Marans over the modest sums of money the Karunanidhi family received for selling their shares in the Marans’ Sun network.”
The US officer also felt that Kanimozhi was the obvious choice to act as her party’s emissary in Delhi as, “She speaks English and, most importantly, she is family,” the cable said.