Kamal Ghorui
Pune: Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday said the 23-km elevated Metro corridor between Shivajinagar and Hinjewadi will be inaugurated in two phases. “The first 11-km stretch of the route will be inaugurated in May this year, while the remaining 12-km section will open in July,” he said.The project, the first Metro corridor in the country to be implemented under a public-private partnership (PPP) model with the Tata group-led Pune IT City Metro Rail Limited (PITCMRL), was earlier scheduled to be completed by the end of March 2026. Operations were expected to begin from April, as per a revised deadline shared by officials earlier.Now, it is the fourth time that the deadline of this project has been extended. Construction began in 2021 and the first Metro pillar was erected in April 2022. The project was initially slated for completion by March 2025, but the deadline was later extended to Sept 2025. As the contractor failed to complete the work within the revised timeframe, the deadline was extended twice more — first till Dec 2025 and then till March 2026. And now, once again.Officials of the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA) said nearly 94% of the project work has been completed and trial runs are currently being conducted on the route. However, several works, particularly related to Metro stations, are still pending. As a result, the project has been delayed further as the concessionaire is yet to submit the final letter confirming readiness to commence operations.Sources in PMRDA told TOI that work has been completed on 13 of the 23 Metro stations on the line, while construction and finishing work at the remaining 10 stations is still underway.The Shivajinagar–Hinjewadi Metro corridor is expected to ease traffic congestion on a busy route, as it is hoped that a large number of IT professionals working in the Hinjewadi IT Park will shift to the Metro, thereby reducing vehicular traffic.Fadnavis also said that once the project is completed, Pune region will have around 56km of operational Metro lines. He added that work on another 55km Metro network is underway, and an additional 80km has been proposed. Once all these projects are completed, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) and PMRDA areas will have a nearly 200km Metro network, he said.
