Narayana Murthy quits as IT advisor to Rajapaksa

Bangalore, Feb 18 (PTI) Within days of his appointment
as International Advisor on Information Technology to Sri
Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Indian IT czar N R
Narayana Murthy Wednesday quit from the post citing personal
reasons.

In a letter to Rajapaksa, Murthy, chief mentor of
Infosys Technologies, said he has decided to withdraw from
being the advisor due to personal reasons but did not
elaborate.

In his letter, details of which were made available
to the media here by Infosys, Murthy thanked Rajapaksa for the
invitation to be the IT advisor and for the courtesy shown to
him during his recent visit to Sri Lanka.

Last Saturday, Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Palitha
Kohona announced Murthy's appointment in Colombo and said he
(Murthy) has accepted it.

Rajapaksa made the appointment after inviting Murthy
as the chief guest to the ceremonial launch of '2009-Year of
English and Information Technology' at the Presidential
Secretariat in the Sri Lankan capital.

Speaking at that event, Rajapaksa said India's success
in the field of IT in recent years has highly inspired Sri
Lanka. "It is for this reason that we have turned to India in
addition to other countries for technical support to
strengthen our own endeavours," he said. PTI