Namo Bharat Diwas 2026: Three Years of Rapid Rail

The National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) held Namo Bharat Diwas 2026 in New Delhi on 17 October 2026. The event marked three years of Namo Bharat services on the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut regional rapid rail corridor and reviewed how the project has changed travel between the capital and western Uttar Pradesh.

Who was present

Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs and Power Manohar Lal attended the function. He was joined by Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Tokhan Sahu, by D. Thara, Secretary of the Department of Capital Development and Chairperson of NCRTC, and by Satendra Singh, Secretary of the Department of Urban Development. Managing Director Shalabh Goel welcomed the guests along with the directors and senior officers of the corporation.

Three years of the corridor

Trains first ran in October 2023 on the 17-km priority section between Sahibabad and Duhai Depot, which the Prime Minister inaugurated on 20 October 2023. The remaining stretches opened one after another. On 22 February 2026 the whole 82-km line from Delhi to Meerut through Ghaziabad was dedicated to the nation, together with Meerut Metro.

The numbers behind the service

• More than 4.5 crore passenger journeys have been made on the corridor since services opened
• The service now carries over 1.1 lakh commuters every day
• Its highest ridership in a single day is about 1.68 lakh passengers
• A captive solar power plant of 110 MW is being built, besides the Solar on Track programme, to make the project cheaper to run and easier on the environment

Corridors still to come

Two more priority corridors, Delhi-Panipat-Karnal and Delhi-Gurugram-Behror, are expected to be cleared shortly. Two others, Ghaziabad-Jewar and Noida-Faridabad-Gurgaon, are at the detailed project report stage. Speaking at the function, the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister said better transport does not only shorten the distance between cities but also links people to fresh opportunities and quickens regional growth.

Other highlights of the day

A film traced the milestones of the project, the work done on multimodal connectivity and the steps taken to improve first-mile and last-mile travel for commuters. The annual NCRTC awards were given to employees for their performance during the year, and cultural performances of music and dance rounded off the celebration.