PATNA (Metro Rail News): Work on Patna Metro’s underground Mithapur-Rukanpura section is moving ahead, with construction of the Rukanpura station now entering the digraph wall stage. The 10.5 km underground stretch along Nehru Path will see a major tunneling push in November, with 4 TBMs planned for deployment.
At Rukanpura, large steel reinforcement cages are being lowered into the station site using heavy-deauty cranes. Engineers are checking the placement and alignment before the cages are used for the next stage of diaphragm wall construction.
Patna Metro Advances Rukanpura Work Ahead of Tunnelling Push
On the ground, cranes are lowering big steel cages into the station site at Rukanpura. Engineers are checking that these cages are placed correctly before the next step begins. These steel cages will be the base of diaphragm walls which have strong concrete walls that will hold up the ground around the station as workers dig deeper underground.
The next step will be the tunnelling,Four tunnel boring machines (TBMs) will soon be lowered into the ground near Patna Zoo. Two of these machines will dig toward Patna Junction,and the other two will dig towards Rukanpura. This means tunnelling can be done from both directions at the same time and speeding up the work. Engineers have also made a small change near Patna Zoo. They just moved the tunnel path slightly so it stays away from the Zoo but still follows the road.
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Six stations planned on the underground Red Line
The underground section of Patna Metro is going to be 10.5km long and will have six stations:
- Patna Zoo
- Vidyut Bhawan
- Patna Junction
- Raja Bazaar
- Vikas Bhawan
- Rukanpura
Patna Junction station will serve as interchange station, allowing passengers to travel between two corridors. The alignment will pass beneath Nehru Path also known as Bareilly Road, connecting both ends of the route through the city’s busy central area.
About 5.2km of tunnel has already been built between Moln-ul-Haq Stadium and Patna Junction, after a tunnel boring machine completed its ninth breakthrough there. This shows that underground work is moving forward in more than one part of the city at the same time.
Commuter impact
Once complete, the Mithapur-Rukanpura underground link of Patna Metro will connect corridor 1’s central Patna stations including Patna junction, Vikas bhawan, Vidyut Bhawan, Raja bazaar and Patna Zoo to the already-operational elevated blue line sections around Khemnichak, Zero Mile, Bhoothnath and Patliputra bus terminal, which opened progressively between October 2025 and July 2026. This would extend metro connectivity from Patna’s eastern elevated stretch into the dense central city core, though PMRCL has not announced a firm public commissioning date for this specific underground segment.
Also Read: Patna Metro Route Realignment to Bypass Statutory Approval Hurdles
Project Overview