Pune Metro Line 3’s first stretch, connecting Hinjawadi’s IT corridor to Balewadi, has missed its second announced launch date. Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol said on July 18 that passenger services are now likely to begin “within the coming week,” pending final safety certification, according to Free Press Journal and Punekar News.

A project that keeps sliding its own deadlines

The 13.3-km stretch between Maan in Hinjawadi and Balewadi, with 12 stations, was originally targeted for June 30, then officials pushed it to July 15 to finish technical and ground-level work. That date also came and went: the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS), Janak Garg, inspected the corridor between July 5 and July 9, flagged minor technical adjustments, and Maha Metro has since submitted a compliance report. Officials now expect the certificate within days, the basis for Mohol’s “coming week” timeline.

Line 3 is India’s first metro built under a public-private partnership, led by a consortium of Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited and Siemens Project Ventures, at a project cost of roughly ₹8,313 crore. The full corridor, once complete, will run 23.2 km on 23 stations from Hinjawadi to Shivajinagar; a second phase from Balewadi to the district court area is separately targeted for end-August.

What it means for residents

For the thousands who commute daily into Hinjawadi’s IT parks from Wakad, Baner and Balewadi, the metro is meant to replace a road commute that jams daily on the Hinjawadi-Wakad stretch. Two missed dates in three weeks mean commuters have twice arranged around a launch that didn’t happen; PMPML’s feeder-bus routes, planned to link stations to IT campuses, stay on hold until the corridor opens. The base fare is expected to start around ₹12, in line with existing Pune Metro pricing.

The slippage itself is not unusual for infrastructure projects of this scale, but the pattern of precise dates announced and then quietly moved is worth residents tracking, since it shapes how much weight to put on the next official date.

Outlook

The near-term marker is straightforward: whether CMRS issues the safety certificate this week, as officials expect, or whether a third date slips. If cleared, watch for the formal inauguration announcement and PMPML’s feeder-route rollout in the same window. Beyond that, the August target for the Balewadi-Shivajinagar extension will be the next test of whether the project’s revised timeline holds.

Sources: Free Press Journal, Punekar News

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.