Pune Metro Line 3 Has Missed 8 Opening Dates Since May. Date 9 Now Depends on an Election.

May. June 15. July 15. August. The first week of September. Late September. By the time you've read that list, you already know where this is going: as of today, October 12, 2026, the Hinjewadi-Shivajinagar metro - Pune Metro Line 3 - has missed something like eight separately announced opening dates since May, and it still hasn't carried a single paying passenger.

That's not for lack of a finished railway. The Commissioner of Railway Safety cleared the first 12 stations, from Maan to the R.K. Laxman Museum at Balewadi, for passenger operations on July 23. In late September, CMRS cleared five more, taking the tally to 17 of the corridor's 23 stations - genuinely ready, signed off, safe to run trains on. PMRDA itself said on September 29 that the line "could be ready for commuters within 10 to 12 days." That window closed around October 9-11. Nothing happened.

The holdup isn't engineering anymore

Here's the part that's actually new since the last time this made headlines: the obstacle has stopped being technical and become entirely political-administrative. On September 22, the Election Commission announced the Model Code of Conduct for Maharashtra's Legislative Council elections - the Graduates' and Teachers' constituencies, Pune division included - with polling set for October 23 and vote-counting on October 27. PMRDA's Metropolitan Commissioner, Dr. Abhijit Chaudhary, put it plainly a day later: "The inauguration date has not been received from the Prime Minister's Office. The model code of conduct has also come into force." PMRDA said it would check with the Pune District Collector's office on whether any inauguration ceremony is even legally permissible while the MCC is active.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis reportedly wrote to the PMO back on September 10 asking that an inauguration be scheduled around the Prime Minister's own availability. As of today, no date has come back. So a railway line that has been physically safe to operate for nearly three months is sitting idle because nobody wants to open it without a ceremony, and nobody can schedule the ceremony until an election most Puneites aren't even voting in - it's a graduates'/teachers' constituency seat - finishes counting on October 27.

That's not a conspiracy theory; it's just the sequence of dates. And it hasn't gone unnoticed - opposition politicians have publicly accused the state government of deliberately holding the launch for a bigger photo-op closer to, or after, the election, despite the safety clearance having been in hand since July.

Meanwhile, the demand this line is meant to serve keeps growing

While the opening date drifts, the case for the line keeps getting stronger on paper. Roughly 90,000 employees across five major IT campuses in Hinjewadi are the corridor's core ridership base, and two of the larger campuses - together accounting for around 55,000 of those employees - are reportedly planning dedicated foot-overbridges straight into metro stations once it opens. A separate ₹426-crore last-mile road connectivity package for Hinjewadi has also been sanctioned, split between PMRDA and MIDC, specifically to feed traffic toward the stations this line is supposed to serve.

In other words: everyone agrees the demand is real and growing. The only open question is a calendar one, and it isn't in anyone's hands who actually rides the IT corridor every day.

What this means for your commute this month

If you work in Hinjewadi and have been waiting for the metro to make your commute easier, the honest answer today is: keep waiting, and plan around October 27 at the earliest, not as a promise but as the next real checkpoint. That's ten more Mondays, give or take, of the same IT-corridor traffic this line was built to relieve.

It's exactly the gap GoVia exists to fill in the meantime - not because carpooling replaces a metro line, but because splitting today's commute with colleagues heading to the same campus means fewer cars idling in the same jam this line will eventually absorb. Nobody's earning a fare off it; you're just sharing the fuel and tolls on a trip you were already making. The metro will open eventually - on its ninth announced date, or its tenth. Until then, the ride you're already taking is the one worth sharing.