Overview
- At an IIPA memorial lecture, MMRCL chief Ashwini Bhide presented Line‑3 (Colaba–SEEPZ) as India’s first fully underground metro executed without any major incidents during over five years of construction.
- Bhide described the project as both engineering and social engineering, saying transparent, frequent public communication helped sustain trust in densely populated neighborhoods.
- Additional Chief Secretary Rajesh Aggarwal said the achievement came in one of the country’s toughest urban settings and noted growing demand for upcoming Delhi Metro lines to be planned underground.
- Project delivery was credited to advance planning, decisive leadership, continuous site monitoring, technology use and coordination across agencies including Mumbai Police, BMC, Railways, Airport Authority, Port and Defence under the Chief Minister’s War Room.
- Citing Mumbai’s peninsula geography and rising population pressure, officials framed underground transit and coastal corridors as essential, listing completed works such as Atal Setu and the Navi Mumbai airport alongside ongoing tunnels and coastal links and future corridors to Virar–Alibag and Vadhavan Port.