Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 31 (IANS) “It was a very satisfying experience and I am very happy that Metro treads 190 km,” Delhi Metro chief E. Sreedharan said Saturday, his last day in office.

Till the last day of his work, ‘Metro Man’ Sreedharan was busy on an official tour and reached Metro Bhavan in central Delhi in the evening to bid adieu to the organisation and colleagues he has led for 15 years.

He retired from Delhi Metro Saturday passing the baton to his successor Mangu Singh. He met all the heads of departments to bid them adieu.

“Sreedharan was on an official tour to Chennai and came back today (Saturday) and reached the Metro Bhavan around 6 p.m. for a brief official ceremony,” a Metro official told IANS.

He was on the trip for the past one week. He had an eventful 15-year tenure as the Delhi Metro chief.

Sreedharan, then 65, joined the Delhi Metro in 1997. The first eight km stretch of the Metro opened in December 2002. Today, the network is spread over 190 km in Delhi and the national capital region towns of Gurgaon in Haryana and Noida and Vaishali in Uttar Pradesh.

Sreedharan formally handed over the Metro charge tom his successor Mangu Singh, a civil engineer, at a brief ceremony.

Mangu Singh was selected by a three-member panel consisting of union Urban Development Secretary Sudhir Krishna, Delhi Chief Secretary P.K. Tripathi and Sreedharan.

Mangu Singh, an Indian Railway Service of Engineers officer of the 1981 batch, also worked with Sreedharan on the Kolkata Metro project. He has been associated with the Delhi Metro since its inception.