Underground Metro 3 station floods with first rains

Water first began to pour down the steps of the Acharya Atre Chowk station and into the premises at noon, amid heavy rains on Monday

MUMBAI: An early rain test for Mumbai’s underground metro stations has not gone well.

Mumbai, India - May 26, 2025: Inside view of Acharya Atre chowk Aqua line station which was closed after water flooded inside the station,, in Mumbai, India, on Monday, May 26, 2025. (Photo by Anshuman Poyrekar/ Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)

The Acharya Atre Chowk Metro station, on the Aqua Line, or Line 3, and inaugurated only a fortnight ago, flooded in the first heavy rains of the season, on Monday. As a precautionary measure, and to ensure passenger safety, metro services between Worli and Acharya Atre Chowk have been temporarily suspended.

Water first began to pour down the steps of the Acharya Atre Chowk station and into the premises at noon, amid heavy rains on Monday. The water damaged station furniture and even entered the platform areas. The reason, officials claimed, was damage caused to a bund that had been holding water back at an under-construction section of the station.

Commuters shuffled through the water until the station was shut soon after flooding just past noon. “Amid intense rainfall, water seepage was reported,” a spokesperson for the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MMRCL) confirmed. “The incident occurred when the concrete water-retaining wall constructed at an under-construction entry/exit collapsed due to a sudden ingress of water.”

The Acharya Atre Chowk station, incidentally, is part of Mumbai’s fully underground Metro Line 3 (Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ).

Built at a cost of ₹37,000 crore, this corridor was built with promises of state-of-the-art drainage systems, overall monsoon preparedness and safe operations. “Acharya Atre Chowk station of @MumbaiMetro3 was affected today by sudden water ingress from nearby SWD which gushed inside station thru one entry under construction... Issue… is getting addressed,” Ashwini Bhide, managing director of MMRCL, said in a post on X.