E Sreedharan Is BJP's Chief Ministerial Candidate In Kerala, Expected To Contest From Kochi

Metro Man E Sreedharan has been announced as BJP's Chief Ministerial Candidate for Kerala's upcoming assembly polls. 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. He has indicated that he will prefer contesting from a seat in Kochi which is not too far away from his residence in Ponnani.

Sreedharan after completing the final round of inspections at the reconstructed Palarivattom flyover though assured that he will continue to remain available to oversee developmental projects.

Sreedharan is considered one of India's greatest engineers who in his illustrious career has successfully executed challenging mega projects like the Delhi Metro and Konkan Railway. He has also been credited with planning and implementing the Kolkata Metro and turning around the Cochin Shipyard.

Sreedharan started his career as a lecturer of civil engineering at the Government Polytechnic, Kozhikode, then joined the Bombay Port Trust as an apprentice. Next, he cleared the Indian Engineering Service Exam in 1953 and joined the Southern Railway in December 1954.

He, then, took up the task of developing the Delhi Metro. He finished projects before deadlines, and within 16 years, made Delhi Metro one of the handful of Metro projects in the world that are profitable and were able to shift public commuters en masse to Metro.

Sreedharan was later offered advisory roles in Kochi Metro, Jaipur Metro, Lucknow Metro, Coimbatore Metro and proposed projects in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.

He quickly moved up the ladder because of his performance.

In 1964, he completed the restoration work of a bridge washed away by cyclone in 46 days against the six month target set by the Railways.

Sreedharan who recently joined the BJP had said that he is opposed to love jihad because he had seen in Kerala that Hindu girls were tricked into marriages