The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced that their Chief Ministerial candidate, if the party gets voted to power in Kerala, will be the ‘Metro Man’, E Sreedharan. The announcement was made by BJP’s Kerala chief K Surendran.
Sreedharan is expected to resign from his post of Principal Adviser DMRC today (4 March) before filing his nomination papers for the polls. Sreedharan has expressed his desire to contest from a seat in Kochi, which is not too far away from his residence in Ponnani.
Sreedharan, however, will still ensure that the final round of inspections at the reconstructed Palarivattom flyover are completed. He will also continue to remain available to oversee developmental projects.
Sreedharan came into the public limelight after he successfully executed the Delhi Metro project. Considered one of India’s greatest engineers who took on challenging mega projects like the Konkan Railway, he has also been credited with planning and implementing the Kolkata Metro and turning around the Cochin Shipyard. Delhi Metro is only one of the handful of Metro projects in the world that is profitable and has changed the way people in Delhi and the National Capital Region commute.
Sreedharan has also been on advisory roles in Kochi Metro, Jaipur Metro, Lucknow Metro, Coimbatore Metro and proposed projects in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.
Sreedharan said that he joined the BJP after a lot of contemplation and has been very vocal about the social issue of love jihad, as, in his own words, he has seen Hindu girls being tricked into marriages in Kerala.