New Delhi, May. 14 (PTI): The abrupt end to Dayanidhi Maran's tenure as Communications and IT Minister at the Centre could deliver a severe jolt to many of the policies that he espoused.

The 41-year-old DMK leader's biggest achievement was hard-selling India to global telecom and IT equipment manufacturers -- a task which he executed with elan.

He got Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, to finally set up a manufacturing unit in India, besides others like Ericsson and Motorola. Many IT companies too started making allied products in the country.

However, measures initiated by him to provide cheaper bandwidth, broadband services and roaming rates, bring about the 3G policy and divert Internet traffic within the country by hosting servers in India could get stuck after his exit.

He also faced accusations of directing most of these investments toward Chennai -- his home base.

Maran was successful in bringing the first chip manufacturing facility into the country when AMD signed a technological pact with SemIndia, an NRI-backed consortium for a 3-billion dollar project in Hyderabad.

The Minister's entry into the Union Cabinet, like his exit now, was equally dramatic and he tried his best to match his predecessors like Arun Shourie, Pramod Mahajan and Ram Vilas Paswan during whose tenure litigation, disinvestment and reforms in the telecom sector were at the peak.

Maran's brush with controversies started when he stepped into the domain of telecom regulator TRAI on the crucial issue of Access Deficit Charge, a fee paid by private operators to BSNL for its rural and remote area networks -- despite the TRAI Act making it clear that regulating tariffs and ADC was TRAI's domain.

It was felt that he took the ill-fated step, from which he subsequently backtracked, to settle scores with former TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal. It was not just that, Maran also got most of the TRAI proposal given under Baijal's regime reworked under a new Chairman again -- like 3G recommendations.

The other step which might not have made any economic sense to telecom PSUs like BSNL and MTNL was the much-touted OneIndia scheme -- where one can call any part of the country at Rs 1 a minute. Analysts exactly did not approve this as tariffs rates in India were already the lowest in the world.

The telecom industry does acknowledge that hiking FDI in telecom to 74 per cent might not have been his decision but getting it done in a coalition government was one of his biggest achievements.

The industry says the pending issues needing immediate attention are 3G policy and spectrum vacation, which will now wait for a new minister and could be delayed.

The addition of over six million mobile telephony subscribers a month was seen as a reflection of his policies and it was during his time, India joined the elite club of 100 million mobile subscribers. Maran had set a target of 500 million telephone connections by 2010.

To bring competition into the National and International Long Distance telephony, he also reduced the license fee substantially as well as revenue share.

The result was that over 20 companies bagged licenses to offer these services, a move that did not go down well with Finance Ministry. He also tried to convince mobile operators to reduce the exorbitantly high roaming rates.