Within days of his appointment as International Advisor on Information Technology to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, IT czar N R Narayana Murthy on 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.