India’s ‘Metro Man’ Elattuvalapil Sreedharan who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party earlier in February has been picked as party’s chief minister candidate for Kerala Assembly elections 2021, said state chief K Surendran on Thursday.
Earlier, the new Kerala CM candidate, Sreedharan announced that he would resign from the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on Thursday and would file the nominations only after that.
With Sreedharan’s first election due in May, here are a few things about the Metro Man of India and BJP’s candidate for Kerala’s chief ministerial post.
He is a retired IES (Indian Engineering Services)
Sreedharan, who completed his civil engineering from Government Engineering College, Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh also served as a civil servant. In 1970, Sreedharan headed a project on planning and design of Calcutta metro.
Sreedharan engineered India’s first metro
The legendary engineer travelled across the world to collect information on the technology behind the Metro, over-bridges, railways and other infrastructural projects and made tremendous contribution while leading the Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro project to engineer India’s first metro. He was later made Delhi Metro chief.
He was a part of all key Metro projects in India
Sreedharan retired as Delhi metro chief in 2011 to join as principal advisor of the Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation (LMRC) in 2014. He resigned from LMRC following health crisis. The BJP leader was also a member of United Nations’ high-level advisory panel on Sustainable Transport (HLAG-ST) for a period of three years in 2015.
He is a Padma Vibhushan & Padma Shri awardee
The 88-year-old pioneer engineer was honoured with Padma Shri in 2001 and Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award of India in 2008.
Sreedharan was a teacher
For a brief span of time, Sreedharan served as a lecturer of Civil Engineering before joining the Bombay Port Trust. He taught students at the government Polytechnic, Kozhikode (Calicut).
