New Delhi: After steering Delhi Metro to new heights, `Metro Man` E Sreedharan is likely to quit as its managing director by this year-end after helping his successor to accustom to the challenge for about six months.
A senior Metro official said 78-year-old Sreedharan`s successor may be announced by mid-year so that the new man on the job is left with around six months to get a hang of the assignment before the present managing director calls it a day.
"Sreedharan has plans to quit by this year-end. It depends on the announcement of his successor. His successor needs six months so that Sreedharan could groom him for the job," the official said.
Sreedharan, who underwent a beating heart surgery in April, had last year said he has "nothing more to achieve" in life and he wants to spend his post-retirement days in his native Kerala.
Sreedharan, who has been heading the Delhi Metro since its inception in 1995 and has changed the way Delhi travels in about 15 years, is credited with completion of several of the Delhi Metro projects within budget and ahead of schedule.
The soft-spoken Sreedharan has become synonymous with the modern rapid transit system that helped ease transportation woes in the national capital.
The first Metro services rolled out in 2002 on a small stretch in north Delhi and within a span of eight years, Delhi Metro now has a network of nearly 180 km connecting the national capital with its satellite cities of Noida and Gurgaon.
PTI
