B146;lore metro man gets the boot

A long-standing feud between Bangalore8217;s metro rail man, IAS officer K N Srivastava, and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda has culminated in the ouster of the former...

A long-standing feud between Bangalore8217;s metro rail man, IAS officer K N Srivastava, and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda has culminated in the ouster of the former, the driving force behind the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation.

What sealed Srivastava8217;s fate was his apparent failure to invite Gowda8217;s son and Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy for a function to unveil a new logo for the Bangalore Metro project here on March 13.

The next day, while K N Srivastava was in New Delhi to present a note on the project 8212; to be shortly placed before the Union Cabinet 8212; and to lay the ground for getting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to inaugurate the project work on April 1, his transfer orders were issued in Bangalore. Srivastava was ordered out without a posting and replaced by V Madhu, who was on deputation at the Centre as joint secretary Cabinet Secretariat.

8216;8216;I am really surprised,8217;8217; Srivastava said when he learnt about his transfer from the BMRC. The ouster of the Bangalore metro man, who was gradually gaining the stature of Delhi Metro8217;s E Sreedharan for his ability to drive the project forward, is being seen as the final straw in a spat with the Gowda family dating back to Kumaraswamy8217;s father8217;s time in active state politics.

Srivastava reportedly fell out of favour with the Gowdas during his tenure as MD of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited after he refused to heed a directive from Gowda to reverse the transfer of an executive engineer related to the family.

During the previous Dharam Singh-led Congress-JDS coalition government, Gowda and Srivastava had been involved in an indirect confrontation over the metro project, with Gowda constantly opposing it and often favouring a monorail promoted by his former cabinet secretary Zafar Saifullah8217;s company.

It was incidentally Gowda, during his tenure as Karnataka chief minister in 1994-95, who set up an initiative to create a mass rapid transit system for Bangalore. Srivastava, who became head of BMRC during the second half of the S M Krishna-led Congress regime, has constantly issued public statements contradictory to Gowda8217;s. With the support of Dharam Singh behind him, over the past two years Srivastava pushed for the Metro project by constantly indicating progress.

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The mass transit project envisaged by Gowda was given a logo in 1994-95. Srivastava chose to change the logo and released it through the Governor without inviting the CM for the function. This irked the new CM further, say BMRC and state secretariat officials.

Srivastava has indicated that his ouster has less to do with the logo and more to do with the monorail lobby.