Extrenal forces thwarting patch up: Dayanidhi Maran

Chennai, July 20 (UNI) Former Union Minister and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's estranged grand nephew Dayanidhi Maran today alleged that some external forces were trying to avoid a patch up between the Marans and the first family of the State.

When asked at a press conference about the possibility of a rapprochement between the two families, Mr Dayanidhi without taking any names said some external forces around the Chief Minister were thwarting such moves.

''Even if Mr Karunanidhi is willing to take us back in their family fold, some forces around him are preventing it,'' he said, in a veiled reference to Mr Karunanidhi's Madurai-based son M K Azhagiri, who had reportedly prevented the Marans from greeting the Chief Minister on his birthday last month.

The relationship between the two families turned sour and culminated in Mr Maran tendering his resignation from the Union Cabinet last year after his Tamil Daily Dinakaran published an opinion poll on political heir apparent to Mr Karunanidhi.

The estranged relations virtually reached a point of no return when the ruling DMK launched ''Kalignar TV,'' named after the DMK patriarch, in an apparent bid to scuttle the monopoly enjoyed by Marans-owned Sun TV.

Since then there had been moves for a rapprochement but it could not materialise. There were also reports that Mr Maran had met Mr Karunanidhi's son and Local Administration Minister M K Stalin, but the efforts went in vain.

But Mr Maran said he did not know what mistake he had committed that led to the strained relations between the two families.

''Though I have been treated shabbily and my relatives harassed in the past one year, I will be a loyal worker of the DMK and continue to be a staunch loyalist of Kalaignar,'' he reiterated.

''Till now, I don't know what mistake I had committed,'' he added.

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