Mr Dayanidhi Maran, who was once considered as the blue-eyed boy of his grand-uncle and party chief, Mr M. Karuanidhi, and ‘the most suitable person' to represent DMK at the Centre, made his political and electoral debut in 2004 – following his father Murasoli Maran's demise.

He was elected to the 14{+t}{+h} Lok Sabha from the Central Chennai constituency in the May 2004 general election. Following this, he was given a Cabinet berth as Minister for Communications and Information Technology.

Born in 1966, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, is an economics graduate from Chennai's Loyola College.

He fell out with Mr Karunanidhi in 2007 when Dinakaran , a Tamil daily owned by his brother, Mr Kalanithi Maran's Sun TV Network, published a survey that portrayed Mr M.K. Stalin as more popular than his elder brother, Mr M.K. Azhagiri. Mr Maran was subsequently dropped from the Union Cabinet.

But he patched up with Mr Karunanidhi just before the 15th Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and was re-elected from the same constituency. He became the Union Minister for Textiles then.As of 2009, Mr Maran declared immovable assets worth Rs 3.66 crore and zero immovable assets, as per data from the Election Commission's Web site.

When he was the Union Minister for IT and Telecommunication, he was said to be responsible for bringing in some major foreign direct investments into Tamil Nadu such as Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Flextronics and Dell to set up manufacturing facilities.

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