The Bharatiya Janata Party has not yet taken a final decision to nominate former Delhi Metro chief E. Sreedharan as the chief minister candidate of the party for Kerala assembly polls, said Union Minister V. Muraleedharan. The clarification came in the wake of media reports that the saffron party had declared the octagenarian as its CM face.
“There were some statements that E. Sreedharan will be CM candidate in Kerala. I heard media reports that the party has announced him as the CM candidate. I talked to the party president (K. Surendran) and he said that he hasn’t made any statement and that he was only referring to some issues in Kerala. So it should not be considered as an announcement,” Muraleedharan told news agency ANI.
Earlier, the Union minister had said that Sreedharan, popularly known as Metroman, will be the chief ministerial candidate of the BJP.
"BJP4Keralam will fight Kerala polls with E. Sreedharan Ji as its Chief Ministerial Candidate. We will defeat both CPIMKerala and INCKerala to provide a corruption-free, development-oriented Governance for the people of Kerala," he had said in a tweet.
His tweet came hours after party's state chief K. Surendran said he had requested the party's national leadership to announce Sreedharan as the NDA's chief ministerial candidate.
If the NDA, "under the leadership of 'Metroman', gets an opportunity to rule the state, "we are confident we will be able to implement development works under Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a ten-fold force in Kerala," Surendran had said.
Meanwhile, the 88-year-old technocrat announced his decision to end his 24-year long career with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on Thursday.
Sreedharan, now a member of the BJP state Election Committee, said he has requested the party leadership to field him from a constituency not far from his residence in Ponnani in Malappuram district.
He has said his main aim was to help the party come to power in Kerala and that he will be open to chief ministership. He has also said the focus will be on developing infrastructure in a big way and bring the state out of the debt trap if the BJP wins the assembly polls.
Elections to the 140-member Kerala Assembly will take place on April 6.
With inputs from PT
