One of India’s greatest engineers E Sreedharan, fondly known as ‘Metro man’, is all set to join the BJP during the Rath Yatra in Kerala. Dr E Sreedharan, who is instrumental in envisioning and designing the country’s modern railway infrastructure, may also contest the upcoming Kerala assembly elections as a BJP candidate.
Nearly a day after expressing his wish to join the BJP, Sreedharan has also revealed interesting details about his past association with the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in his yesteryears. Disclosing his decades-old association with RSS, Dr Sreedharan said that he is a Swayamsevak from his school days, and Sangh had laid all the foundational values in this life.
Speaking to NDTV, technocrat E Sreedharan said that he has lost faith in all other political parties and decided to join BJP due to its progressive outlook. The Padma Vibhushan awardee engineer also heaped praises on PM Modi and former Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee.
“I got great admiration for PM Modi personally but, that alone is not the thing. I have a good rapport with (Atal) Vajpayee, who was the previous prime minister. Very good rapport with him in fact, he only opened the first section of Delhi Metro.. and his conduct, the way he was behaving was very impressive to me,” said E Sreedharan, speaking to NDTV.
Love Jihad is real, Hindus are tricked in a marriage, says technocrat Sreedharan
One of the major highlights of Dr Sreedharan’s interview was his unequivocal opposition to the menace of “love jihad”. Love Jihad is the barbaric act often carried out by Muslims to forcefully convert the non-Hindus, especially Hindus, by trapping them through marriage because he had seen in Kerala that Hindu girls were tricked into marriage.
Responding to NDTV’s question on the menace of “love jihad”, Dr Sreedharan said, “Love Jihad, yes, I see what is happened in Kerala. How Hindus are being tricked in a marriage and how they suffer… not only Hindus, Muslim, the Christian girls are being tricked in a marriage. Now that sort of a thing I certainly will oppose.”
His comments against ‘Grooming Jihad’ comes amidst the rising instance of religious conversion carried out by Muslims through ways of fraud, coercion or marriage.
‘BJP is party of nation lovers, I don’t like people eating beef’: Dr Sreedharan
Dr Sreedharan also spoke about the controversy surrounding beef in the state of Kerala. “Personally, I am a very, very strict vegetarian. I don’t even eat eggs, so, certainly, I don’t like anybody eating meat. That is certain…” he said, in response to a question on beef-eating in Kerala and the BJP’s campaign against cow meat.
The former chief of Delhi Metro also said that it was wrong to portray BJP as a communal party today in the country. Dr Sreedharan asserted that BJP was a party of nation lover and not a communal party.
“I have got such a long association with people in BJP – it is not a communal party at all. It is a party consisting of nation lovers and who accept that all parties, all communities are alike as far as they’re concerned. That is the attitude of the Modi government. I can see the way he speaks, I have never seen him at any time attacking any religion. This religious bias in an unnecessarily taunt on BJP and very unjust, according to me,” the former technocrat added.
The 88-year-old technocrat said that his aim was to bring the party into power in Kerala and added that he was open to the chief ministership. He also said the focus would be on developing infrastructure if the BJP emerges victorious in the assembly polls, likely to be held in April-May this year.
