Even as Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis flagged off the first trial run of the Navi Mumbai Metro, a lot of work still remains to be completed on all the three lines of the project that has faced unprecedented delays over the past eight years. However, officials from CIDCO, which started work on the project in May 2011, cited rain to be the main reason for delay this year. They claim that the project would be completed by June 2020 — the fourth deadline set for it.

Initially, the Metro was scheduled to be completed by 2014, but later CIDCO announced that it would be done by 2018. However, in early 2018, CIDCO once again shifted the deadline to May 2019 and now it claims the work would take another year. A worker present at the Belapur Metro station said, "Work is moving slowly as we have a handful of labourers. We are hardly 10 of us here and due to rain we are being able to work only once or twice a week." A senior CIDCO official said, "The project will be completed by June 2020. Official trial runs will start by December this year and commercial operations by next year. We needed time to complete some of the work, which also faced disruptions due to the rains."