Delhi metro chief quits after fatal bridge collapse

^By Harmeet Singh Shah
^CNN

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) - The man credited with building New Delhi's shiny metro rail system offered to quit the project Sunday, owning responsibility for a subway bridge collapse that killed at least five people.

"I take full moral responsibility for this accident. And having taken this moral responsibility, I have decided to resign as the managing director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation," Elattuvalapil Sreedharan told a news conference.

New Delhi launched its metro system six years ago, a project that cut through India's bureaucratic red-tape that usually holds back big infrastructure programs.

Sreedharan, 77, however, noted that Sunday's crash would set the metro project back by three months.

Five workers, one of them a site engineer, died and 15 others were injured earlier in the day when a portion of a partially-built bridge on the system came down, officials said.

The collapse occurred when a metal support gave way, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation spokesman Anuj Dayal told CNN.

In the Indian capital, notorious for its poor road traffic management, construction on new metro lines has been proceeding at a frenzied pace as the city gets ready to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

But the metro has a tarnished safety record. Part of a another bridge being built to extend the rail system collapsed last October, pinning a bus underneath and killing its driver.