BJP minister makes U-turn, says 'Metro-man' E Sreedharan's name not confirmed for Kerala CM

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 04: After tweeting 'Metroman' E Sreedharan, who recently joined the BJP, will be its chief ministerial candidate for the Kerala assembly elections on April 6, Union Minister V Muraleedharan clarified on Thursday that the party has not made any such announcement.

''What I wanted to tell was that through media reports I learnt that the party has made this announcement. Later, I cross-checked with the party chief who said that he has not made any such announcement,'' V Muraleedharan said on his statement on E Sreedharan.

In his tweet, Muraleedharan had said.."BJP4Keralam will fight Keralapolls with E Sreedharan Ji as its Chief Ministerial Candidate.We will defeat both CPIMKerala & INCKerala to provide a corruption-free, development-oriented Governance for the people of Kerala."

His social media post on Sreedharan's leadership in the Assembly polls came hours after Surendran said he has requested the party's national leadership to announce 'Metroman' as the NDA's chief ministerial candidate.

Referring to Muraleedharan's clarification tweets, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor took a dig at the BJP, saying the saffron party was "confused".

"Hilarious! BJP4Keralam manages to be confused about who will occupy the top floor of a building that will never be built. There will be no BJP CM in Kerala," Tharoor tweeted.

The development comes on a day the 88-year-old technocrat announced his decision to end his 24-year long career with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to enter electoral politics.

Earlier, BJP state president K Surendran said that a 'person like Metroman E Sreedharan becoming the state CM could be good for the state'. "A person like E Sreedharan becoming the Kerala CM is always good for Kerala State," he said.

On Wednesday, the Kerala BJP constituted a 16 member state election committee for the April 6 assembly polls, with ''Metroman'' E Sreedharan, who joined the party recently, being one of them.

BJP state president K Surendran said in a statement that the committee was constituted with the permission of the party''s national president J P Nadda.

Besides Surendran and Sreedharan, union minister V Muraleedharan, BJP national vice president A P Abdullakutty, former state presidents Kummanam Rajasekharan, O Rajagopal MLA, C K Padmanabhan and P K Krishnadas are the prominent members of the committee.

While senior leader and state vice president Shobha Surendran''s name was missing from the list, Mahila Morcha state presiden

t Nivedita Subrahmanian has found a place in the committee. The panel also has some special invitees, including the party''s in-charge C P Radhakrishnan and his deputy Sunil Kumar.

Sreedharan, the architect of the Delhi Metro, had formally joined the BJP on February 25 in the presence of Union Minister R K Singh at a function at Changaramkulam in Malappuram district when the ''Vijay Yatra'' led by Surendran reached there.