[4][5] Sreedharan was appointed by the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to serve on the United Nations's High Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport (HLAG-ST) for a period of three years in 2015.

[6][7][8] He briefly served as a national executive council member of Bharatiya Janata Party, but later quit active politics in December 2021.

[10] E. Sreedharan was born on 12 June 1932 in present-day Karukaputhur, Palakkad District, Kerala, India into a Hindu Malayali family[11][12] to Keezhveettil Neelakandan Moosath and Ammaluamma.

[14] For a short period, Sreedharan worked as a lecturer in Civil engineering at the Government Polytechnic, Kozhikode[11][12] and a year at the Bombay Port Trust as an apprentice.

[citation needed] In December 1964, a cyclone washed away parts of Pamban Bridge that connected Rameswaram to mainland Tamil Nadu.

[23] However, several political parties came out in opposition of the move, and backed Sreedharan's decision in enforcing DMRC's role in the Kochi Metro, after which the government reversed its stance.

[25] The unveiling of the metro was considered a landmark event in India in terms of completion time, control systems used and initiatives such as employing transgender people,[26] vertical gardening, respecting migrant labourers,[27] and use of solar power.

[30] He has also been appointed as advisor for a proposed Metro rail system in Andhra Pradesh in the Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada (VGTM) areas, under the leadership of the Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.

[32] When the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi announced to give free travel facility only to women passengers on buses and Metro trains, he opposed the decision and wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "personal intervention".

[33] He opposed Kerala Government over a legislation which facilitate student organisational activities in all educational institutions, including private self-financing colleges.

[34] He in statement said "campus politics is being encouraged by politicians and even by government leading to disruption of classes, student clashes, criminal activities such as murders, stabbing incidents etc.

He suggested that the KMRL must reduce fare prices and called outside consultants for Kochi metro's Pettah-Thripunithura extension a "foolish act".

[36] Sreedharan called India's Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed train project as a "highly expensive" undertaking that caters only to the elites.

[58] In another international book "マダム、これが俺たちのメトロだ" (Trans: Madam, this is our Metro) written by a female Japanese Civil Engineer Abe Reiko, who was closely associate with the DMRC project, praised Sreedharan for his far-farsightedness and strong determination.