The Delhi Metro Opened Six Stations on 25 December 2002 and Carried 235.8 Crore Passenger Journeys in 2025, and Japan's Aid Agency Found Its First Phase on Budget and Mostly on Time

On 24 December 2002 Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rode the Delhi Metro from Kashmere Gate to Seelampur and flagged it on to Shahdara. Paying passengers followed the next day on the first stretch, between Shahdara and Tis Hazari. The Press Trust of India (PTI) gives that stretch as 8.2 km with six stations on what is now the Red Line; The Tribune’s report of the opening gave the length as 8.3 km. “It is a dream come true,” the Tribune quoted Vajpayee as saying, eight years after the Union Government first approved the project.

By the next day the crowd was large enough that officials issued paper tickets, DMRC officials told PTI. In a statement of mid-March 2026, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) put the Delhi-NCR metro network at about 416 km with 303 stations. This article follows how that network came about, using the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s evaluation of the first phase, DMRC’s own annual report and the press record. For the national totals and the 1984 Kolkata line, see India’s metro networks.

A company set up for one job

Delhi had grown fast before any rail line served its commuters. The JICA evaluation, which draws on Delhi transport data, says that in 1991 buses carried 60 per cent of the trips people made, private vehicles 39.5 per cent and railways 0.5 per cent. Registered cars rose from 520,000 in 1980 to 1.83 million in 1990 and 3.3 million in 1999, against 37,000 buses in 1999.

DMRC was created for the metro and for nothing else. JICA’s evaluators note that it was a new organisation founded specifically for the project, so every employee was new to it, and that recruitment looked for motivation to follow a particular work culture as well as technical skill. They interviewed 17 DMRC directors and department heads. The staff described their approach as “deadline is sacrosanct,” in the evaluation’s wording, and said DMRC took direct charge of moving utilities such as electric poles and water pipes instead of waiting for other agencies. The evaluation adds that such delays commonly hold up public works in India.

The evaluation names leadership as a crucial factor without naming a person. The managing director through Phases I and II was E. Sreedharan, a retired railway engineer. Accounts differ on when he started: Deccan Herald says he was appointed in 1997, while Metro Rail Today counts 16 years of service and gives his retirement date as 31 December 2011. His earlier railway project is described in tuput’s piece on the Konkan Railway.

Japan and South Korea paid for and supplied the first trains

At the opening, Vajpayee said Japan had financed the project to the extent of 56 per cent, according to the Tribune, and the report adds that the Japan Bank for International Cooperation had extended a soft loan of up to Rs 2,090 crore under official development assistance. The JICA evaluation puts the yen loans budgeted for the three lines of Phase I at 162,751 million yen. South Korea also assisted, the Tribune quoted Vajpayee as saying, and the first train, TS#01, was built by the MRM Consortium in South Korea.

TS#01 was shipped to Kolkata and carried to Delhi by rail, and a DMRC spokesperson told The Statesman on 24 December 2025 that it was still in daily service. It started with four cars, at an initial cost of about Rs 24 crore, and has since grown to six cars in 2014 and eight in 2023. DMRC says it has covered about 2.9 million km and carried more than 60 million passengers, and that a mid-life overhaul in 2024 added a new passenger-information system. The annual report for 2021-22 says DMRC bought 70 trains for Phase I between 2002 and 2007.

What the evaluation found on cost and schedule

JICA’s external evaluators reviewed the three lines of Phase I, 58.6 km in all by their count, and recorded Phase I as completed in November 2006. Line I, from Shahdara to Rithala, was commissioned on 31 March 2004, as planned. Line II, between Vishwa Vidyalaya and Central Secretariat, opened on 3 July 2005, three months ahead of a planned 30 September 2005. The last section of Line III, from Barakhamba Road to Indraprastha, opened on 11 November 2006. The evaluation says that section was delayed because government approval came late, and that the delay was offset by the early finish of Line II.

On cost, the evaluators recorded that 159,513 million yen of the 162,751 million yen budgeted for the loan was disbursed, 98 per cent of plan. Spending from the Indian government’s side was Rs 34,320 million against Rs 48,000 million planned, 71.5 per cent, which the report attributes to a shortened construction period and other factors. It concluded that cost and inputs were mostly as planned and rated efficiency high. JICA’s Metro Booklet describes Phase I as the first project completed within its estimated cost and scheduled period.

JICA measured against the plan of 2004. In December 2002 the Tribune reported that all three Phase I lines were expected to be running by September 2005, so the final section arrived 14 months after that earlier expectation.

From 26,000 a day to 81,87,674 in one day

JICA’s evaluation records average ridership in the 2002 financial year, when the first line opened, at 26,000 passengers a day on weekdays and 33,000 on weekends. The evaluators note that low-income families told them a metro ride was itself an outing. They also found that the passenger numbers and fare revenue targets set in 2004 were far from met by 2008: transported passenger-kilometres stood at about a third of the objective. The report says train-service targets were met by 2010 as new lines opened.

DMRC’s annual report for 2021-22 gives about 6 million passenger journeys a day before Covid and about 2.52 million at the time of writing. In its March 2026 statement, DMRC reported 2,283.5 million journeys in 2024 (about 223.5 crore, or 62.39 lakh a day) and 2,358.03 million in 2025 (about 235.8 crore, or 64.60 lakh a day). Construction World’s report carries the same figures.

The single-day record is 81,87,674 journeys on 8 August 2025, announced by DMRC the following day, which was the eve of Raksha Bandhan. DMRC ran 92 additional trips on 8 August and scheduled 455 extra on 9 August. IANS reported that several commuters described crowded platforms and packed coaches that day. The previous record was 78,67,649 on 18 November 2024, according to DMRC’s statement.

The network in 2026

The annual report for 2021-22 describes about 390 km with 286 stations (29 of them interchange stations) on 12 lines with 18 depots, including the 29.16 km Aqua Line of Noida Metro Rail Corporation and the 12.85 km Rapid Metro in Gurugram. DMRC’s March 2026 statement counts about 416 km and 303 stations in Delhi-NCR, of which around 29 km with 21 stations is the Noida-Greater Noida line and around 13 km with 12 stations is Rapid Metro Gurugram. It lists 343 trains of 2,368 coaches, about 4,508 trips a day and punctuality of about 99.9 per cent.

Phase IV, which the annual report sized at about 110 km, is under way. On 8 March 2026 two of its sections opened: 12.3 km of the Pink Line between Majlis Park and Maujpur-Babarpur, and 9.9 km of the Magenta Line between Majlis Park and Deepali Chowk. JICA reports that its loans have supported about 371 km of a 463 km network, with more than one lakh crore yen lent. Phases I to III received the Japan Society of Civil Engineers’ Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award for 2020, presented on 27 June 2021, according to the annual report.

The same report says DMRC was the first metro system in the world to earn carbon credits under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Clean Development Mechanism, and that it received 3,804 credits in the year from its energy-efficiency project. JICA’s booklet repeats the claim. The annual report also records a net loss of Rs 3,808.63 crore for 2021-22, a year in which Covid restrictions had cut ridership. For what the measurements show about the city’s air, see tuput’s piece on Delhi’s air.

What other cities took from it

Other states were already asking for the model on opening day. Urban Development Minister Ananth Kumar said on the day that Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka had shown interest in copying the model, naming Hyderabad with Secunderabad, and Bangalore, according to the Tribune. DMRC now consults for other metros. Its annual report lists assignments including Dhaka Metro, the Gujarat metro project, Mumbai Metro, Noida, Jaipur and metro projects in several cities of Haryana, and turnkey consultancy on 33.07 km of Mumbai Metro and 49.12 km of Patna Metro.

JICA’s Metro Booklet carries a statement by its chief development specialist, M.P. Singh, that DMRC’s record of finishing on time encouraged other Indian cities to plan their own systems, and counts 10 Indian cities with operating metros at the time of writing. The government’s count was 26 cities by March 2026, as reported in India’s metro networks. The role of Japanese lending across those systems is covered in India and Japan’s metro lines and partnership.

Sreedharan was among the Padma Vibhushan recipients announced on 26 January 2008, listed by ANI under science and engineering, and Metro Rail Today records his Padma Shri in 2001. JICA says Japan conferred the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star on him in November 2013. At a reception hosted by the Embassy of Japan on 8 March 2014, JICA’s booklet records, he said he was more satisfied by the “work culture and ethics” brought during construction than by the funds Japan provided.