E. Sreedharan Restored the Pamban Bridge in 46 Days, Led the Konkan Railway to Completion in Seven Years and Ran the Delhi Metro Through Its First Two Phases

E. Sreedharan, born on 12 June 1932, is the Indian Railways engineer who restored the cyclone-hit Pamban bridge in 46 days, headed the Konkan Railway Corporation from its first year in 1990, and was managing director of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) from November 1997 until the end of 2011. The Government of India gave him the Padma Shri in 2001 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2008. Dates below follow his own account where he has given one, and the press and official record otherwise.

A Palghat engineer who joined Southern Railway in 1954

Most of the early detail comes from a first-person interview he gave Gulf News, published on 1 February 2007. He says he was born in Chaliyattiri, a village in Palghat district (now Palakkad), Kerala, and went to live with his elder sister at Chathanur so that he could attend school. Onmanorama’s 2017 profile gives Varavoor in Thrissur district as his birthplace. This article follows his own account.

Victoria College in Palghat came first, then civil engineering at the Government Engineering College, Kakinada, where he graduated in April 1953. After a short spell as a lecturer at Kerala Polytechnic and a year as an apprentice engineer at the Bombay Port Trust, he sat the all-India competitive examination for the Indian Railways engineering services. He qualified from Chennai and joined Southern Railway as a probationary assistant engineer in 1954. Indian Railways sent him to London in 1966 as a Colombo Plan scholar for training, and he says that was the first time he travelled on the London Underground.

Pamban: the restoration in 46 days

After the cyclone of December 1964 damaged the railway bridge between the mainland and Rameswaram island, Sreedharan was given the restoration. He told Gulf News that he received the Railway Minister’s Award for restoring the Pamban Railway Bridge in 46 days.

Metro Rail Today says the deadline for the repair was six months, that his boss cut it to three months, and that he finished in 46 days. A News Minute profile also calls it a three-month job completed in 46 days. Down To Earth says railway engineers repaired the bridge and restored normal operations within 45 days. None of the pages explains the gap between 45 and 46.

tuput’s piece on the Pamban bridge covers the cyclone, the 1914 bridge and the new bridge that opened in 2025.

Kolkata, Cochin and the Railway Board

As deputy chief engineer, Sreedharan says, he was in charge of investigation, planning and design of the first metro in the country, at Kolkata, from 1970 to 1975. Its first 3.4 km section opened on 24 October 1984, a date given in tuput’s piece on India’s metro networks. As a chief engineer from 1976 to 1979 he handled major railway construction.

A year on deputation followed to the Ministry of Shipping and Transport as chairman and managing director of Cochin Shipyard, and says the yard’s first ship, Rani Padmini, was built in that time. Onmanorama dates his promotion to general manager of Western Railway to July 1987. He describes his 1989 post as ex-officio secretary to the Government of India, and Business Today and Metro Rail Today call it Member Engineering, Railway Board. Retirement from the railways came in 1990.

Konkan Railway: a company, a condition and seven years

Business Today’s 2019 report quotes Sreedharan on how the line began. George Fernandes became Railway Minister in December 1989 and asked the Railway Board in his first week for a line joining Bombay to Mangalore along the west coast. Sreedharan, who was then Member Engineering, says the estimate was about 840 km and Rs 1,600 crore, in a year when all new lines together got about Rs 300 crore. At that rate he put construction at 20 to 25 years.

His answer, put to Fernandes on 2 January 1990, was a separate company in which Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala would be partners. The four states would cover a third of the cost and the market would supply the rest. Business Standard’s 2014 account says the Konkan Railway Corporation was set up as a public sector company on 19 July 1990, and that the foundation stone was laid on 15 October 1990. It adds that Sreedharan became its first chairman and managing director on condition that he could pick his own team and work without interference from the ministry. tuput’s article on the Konkan Railway describes the financing.

Business Standard quotes B R Kulkarni, one of the first recruits, saying the corporation chose a small, young team of fresh graduates, and that it had a mere 2,400 people at the peak of construction. When the seed capital from the Centre and the four states ran out, Kulkarni says, contractors worked for nine months without payment. Sreedharan told the paper that more than 70 per cent of landowners let the corporation take their land without waiting for compensation under the Land Acquisition Act, on his promise that they would be paid in full before the first train ran. About 45,000 people were affected across the four states. Ninety-three people lost their lives during construction, the paper reports.

Business Today dates the first train on the completed track to 26 January 1998. A PIB release of 20 June 2022 gives the railway’s own count as a 740 km route with 91 tunnels, 84.496 km of it inside tunnels. Business Standard counted 760 km and 92 tunnels when the line was finished in 1998, and said it cut the Mumbai to Mangalore journey by 26 hours. Recalling the start of the project, Sreedharan told the paper in 2014 that the financial commissioner of railways had said it would not be completed in 25 years, and “We did it in seven years.” He also said he has a little regret that a shortage of funds kept the corporation from spending on technology to prevent slope slips and boulders falling on the track.

Delhi Metro: managing director from 4 November 1997

Sreedharan says his first contact with the Delhi project came in early 1997, when he was inducted into the committee searching for a managing director for DMRC. The committee could not find a suitable person, he says, and by the end of the year the Delhi government insisted that he take the job. He was still handling Konkan Railway and was 64. His condition was freedom to make decisions without political or bureaucratic interference, and he says the government agreed. He officially began as managing director on 4 November 1997, and says it was agreed that he would handle both projects for a time.

Some profiles give 1995 as his start year. The JICA evaluation says DMRC itself was established in 1995. Metro Rail Today and The News Minute count 16 years of service ending in December 2011, which also points to 1995, and Metro Rail Today gives his retirement date as 31 December 2011.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) commissioned an external evaluation of the yen loans for Phase I, published in 2011. It records three lines totalling 58.6 km, commissioned in March 2004, July 2005 and November 2006. Line I was completed as planned, Line II three months ahead of plan, and Line III was delayed in part because government approval came late, though the evaluators say the early finish of Line II offset it. The evaluators say it is usually difficult in India to complete public works on schedule and that the Delhi Metro was mostly completed within schedule. They give the staff’s phrase “Deadline is sacrosanct” and do not name Sreedharan. JICA records Phase II as completed with 83 km of track in August 2011. tuput’s article on the Delhi Metro covers the opening of the first section on 25 December 2002 and the network’s ridership.

At a reception hosted by the Embassy of Japan on 8 March 2014, JICA’s booklet records, he said that what satisfied him more than the funds Japan provided was the work culture and ethics that came with building the metro. Japan’s role across Indian metros is in tuput’s piece on India and Japan’s metro lines.

Kochi Metro and the advisory years

Onmanorama reports that he joined the Kochi Metro Rail project as principal advisor in 2011 and lists the Lucknow and Jaipur metros among his later advisory work. PIB’s text of the Prime Minister’s speech of 17 June 2017 says Kochi Metro Rail Limited is a fifty-fifty joint venture of the Government of India and the Government of Kerala, and that the first phase from Aluva to Palarivattom covers 13.26 km with eleven stations. IBTimes India’s report of the day lists E Sreedharan, as adviser of the metro project, among the dignitaries at the inauguration.

Where the accounts differ

Beyond the points above, the biographical sketches carry other numbers that disagree. The News Minute gives the Delhi Metro as 168 km in all, while an excerpt from M S Ashokan’s biography, published by Quartz, puts Phase II alone at 124 km. JICA’s count is 83 km of track for Phase II, and the sources do not say how each total is measured. Gulf News gives the French award as 2003 in its opening paragraph and 2005 later in the same article. This article uses 2005, the year in Onmanorama and Metro Rail Today.

The honours

The Gazette of India lists “Shri Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, (Civil Service), Delhi” among the Padma Shri awards in the President’s Secretariat notification of 26 January 2001. The 2008 gazette lists Dr E. Sreedharan, Science and Engineering, Delhi, among the Padma Vibhushan recipients, and ANI reported the list on 26 January 2008 together with Rajendra Kumar Pachauri in the same field.

France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 2005, according to Onmanorama and Metro Rail Today. Gulf News says Time magazine listed him among its Asian Heroes in 2003. JICA’s booklet says the Government of Japan conferred the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star on him in November 2013.