NEW DELHI - Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) chief Dr. Elattuvalapil Sreedharan on Sunday resigned over the bridge collapse incident in the Lajpat Nagar area of South Delhi in which killed six persons, including an engineer, and 15 wounded, five of them seriously.

Sreedharan admitted that it was a bigger tragedy than the one which took place earlier in the Lakshmi Nagar area. He resigned taking up moral responsibility for the incident.

“Somebody has to take technical responsibility, but as head of the organisation, I resign. I take moral responsibility of the incident,” said E.Sreedharan at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.

Sreedharan informed journalists that he had sent his resignation to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, taking moral responsibility for the tragic incident.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Government has set up a committee to be headed by A.K.Nagpal of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) to investigate Sunday’s mishap.

After retiring from the Indian Railways as Member Engineering in 1990, Sreedharan acquired worldwide recognition after supervising the building of the next to impossible Konkan Railway along India”s western coast in a record time of seven years.

Starting out 1990, the project was unique in many respects. It was the first major project in India to be undertaken on a BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) basis; the organisation structure was different from that of a typical Indian Railway set-up; the project had 93 tunnels along a length of 82 km and involved tunneling through soft soil.

The total project covered 760 km and had over 150 bridges. That a public sector project could be completed without significant cost and time overruns was considered an achievement by many.

He was made the managing director of Delhi Metro and by mid-2005, all the scheduled sections were completed by their target date or before and within their respective budgets.

Sreedharan was given the sobriquet of Metro Man by the media. In 2005, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d”Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by the French government.

He had announced that he would retire by the end of 2005, but his tenure was extended by another three years to oversee the completion of the second phase of Delhi Metro.

Recently he was invited by Pakistan to assess development of the Lahore Metro plan.

He was also called by the UAE govt in 2005 to Head the Dubai Metro Project, he however rejected their offer, because of his preoccupation with DMRC.

In 2008, E. Sreedharan was conferred upon Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award, by Government. In 2001, he received the Padma Shri award. (ANI)