'Metro man' E Sreedharan: All you need to know about the engineer who is set to join BJP
E Sreedharan, an engineer who has worn many hats including that of a lecturer, was the person behind the country’s first metro service, Kolkata Metro.
Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, popularly known as the ‘Metro man’ of India, made headlines on Thursday by announcing to join the Kerala unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Sreedharan is an engineer by profession who retired as the chief of Delhi Metro and was involved with metro projects in cities of Kochi, Lucknow and Jaipur.
E Sreedharan, an engineer who has worn many hats including that of a lecturer, was the person behind the country’s first metro service, Kolkata Metro. He has worked on the restoration of the picturesque Pamban Bridge, India’s first sea bridge, that connects Rameswaram to mainland Tamil Nadu. He was involved in the Konkan Railway project and, towards the tail end of his career, he was in charge of the Delhi Metro project and retired as its chief in 2011. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2001 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2008.
Sreedharan was a classmate of the former chief election commissioner T N Seshan, who is known for initiating groundbreaking electoral reforms. They both studied at the BEM High School and later at Victoria College in Palakkad, Kerala.
In 2019, Sreedharan grabbed headlines when he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him not to agree to the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government’s proposal to make metro travel free for women commuters. Since Delhi Metro was constructed with the help of a loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), he was worried about its repayments.
“One shareholder cannot take a unilateral decision to give concession to one section of the community and push Delhi Metro into inefficiency and bankruptcy,” he wrote to the prime minister in June.
Worried about a possible surge in the cost of commuting for other passengers, Sreedharan cited it as one of the reasons for not allowing travel concessions when he served as the chief. “Sir, when the first section of the Delhi Metro was to be opened, I had taken a firm and conscious decision that no one would be given any travel concession on Delhi Metro. This stand was taken to maximize revenues so that Metro fares could be kept low so as to be affordable to ordinary citizens,” he wrote in the letter.
In 2018, Sreedharan had also criticised the prime minister’s ambitious bullet train project. In an interview with Hindustan Times, the ‘Metro man of India’ had said that "bullet trains are only for the elite...India needs a safe railway system." He commented that the project was "highly expensive and beyond the reach of the common people."
The BJP has only one MLA in the 140-member Kerala legislative assembly and has been trying to make in-roads in the southern state as assembly polls are scheduled in April-May. The 88-year-old engineer, a household name in the state, told Hindustan Times on Thursday that his decision to join active politics is well thought out and that the BJP, he believes, is the only party that can do justice to the state of Kerala.
“It is not an impulsive decision but well thought out one. I feel the BJP is the right party which can do justice to the state. Kerala has immense potential but I feel sorry about the state of affairs,” he added.
