The city is poised to see the expansion of its metro network after a long hiatus, likely from the first half of 2023 when work on a 28.8km corridor that originates from the Yellow Line at Huda City Centre and loops back to Cyber City after cutting through a large section of the old city is expected to begin.
The long-proposed corridor, referred to as ‘Gurugram Metro’, received the Public Investment Board’s (PIB) approval this week and will next be taken up for a final sanction by the Union Cabinet. The PIB approval was announced by chief secretary Sanjeev Kaushal in Chandigarh on Friday.
Officials at the Haryana Mass Rapid Transport Corporation (HMRTC), which will oversee the construction of this corridor, said they expected work to start by March.
Planning for metro extensions in the city has taken years, going back and forth between the discussion table and the drawing board. Caught in indecision, rethinks and redrawing of alignments, this has been a sore point for the city, which has been leapfrogged by Noida, where the Aqua Line was commissioned in 2019.
The Rs 6,000-crore ‘Gurgaon Metro’ corridor with 27 stations has a 2026 deadline and will fill a large void in the connectivity grid, taking the metro to many densely populated areas, besides bridging old and new Gurgaon.
“The PIB has to give its approval to all major projects that have special purpose vehicle (SPV) funding so that they can then be placed before the Union Cabinet. The next step is to take the DPR before the Cabinet, which will give its final approval,” said a senior HMRTC official.
Officials expect Cabinet clearance in the next couple of months, which will clear the way for work to begin by March. “We have targeted 2026 for the completion of the route, which will include tendering as well as on-ground execution. This will be Gurgaon’s own metro and will be operated by the state government itself,” said the official.
The route, according to the detailed project report (DPR) that has received approval, has 27 elevated stations — Huda City Centre, Sector 45, Cyber Park, Sector 47, Subhash Chowk, Sector 48, Sector 72A, Hero Honda Chowk, Udyog Vihar-6, Sector 10, Sector 37, Basai, Sector 9, Sector 7, Sector 4 , Sector 5, Ashok Vihar, Sector 3, Bajghera Road, Palam Vihar Extension, Palam Vihar, Sector 23A, Sector 22, Udyog Vihar-4, Udyog Vihar-5 and Cyber City. A station in Sector 101 will be part of a spur to the Dwarka Expressway.
The corridor will have an interchange with Rapid Metro, which runs between Cyber City and Sector 56, and to a proposed route from Palam Vihar to Dwarka Sector 21 — the DPR for which was approved by the state government last month — at Rezang La Chowk. When both lines are completed, it will be possible to reach IGI airport through the metro grid by changing to the Airport Express line at Dwarka.
After considering several plans for expanding the metro network in Gurgaon, the state government decided on the Huda City Centre-Cyber City route in 2019. The DPR for it was approved by the state cabinet in August 2020. It was subsequently sent to the ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) in February 2021. The ministry sought some clarifications in September, following which a revised DPR was prepared. This was approved by chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar in November last year and once again forwarded to MoHUA.
In June this year, the HMRTC submitted over 20 copies of the DPR and other relevant documents that were to be circulated to other ministries as well as the PIB for approval.
At present, Gurugram has only 17km of metro line – the 5.3 km stretch of Delhi Metro’s Yellow Line and the 11.7km Rapid Metro. No expansion of the metro service has taken place since 2017, when the second section of the Rapid Metro on Golf Course Road (6.8km) was opened to commuters. Rapid Metro, though now operated by the government through DMRC, was privately built. Before this, the last corridor to be built was the Yellow Line up to Huda City Centre in 2010.
