India’s first bullet train project is being supported, financially and technically, by Japan.
The rate of progress on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor project has not “lived up to” Japan’s initial expectations, a senior official of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday (September 28, 2026).
“Both sides are committed to bringing high-speed trains to India, among other things. Asked by The Hindu about Mr. He added: “We have been training railway workers to operate high-speed railways… It has been taking time, though at the same time, we have been moving forward.
After years of feasibility studies and multiple-level reviews, the project was kicked off on September 14, 2017, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the late Japanese PM Shinzo Abe laid its foundation stone in Ahmedabad.
Speaking exclusively to The Hindu , the official said that Japan is not in a position to declare when the project will be completed, but maintained that, despite the delay, the project is now making “steady progress”. India and Japan will convene the ‘two plus two’ dialogue by the end of the year, the official said. On the issue of disputed territories, the Japanese official asserted that all countries “must respect international maritime laws in the South China Sea and the East China Sea”, including in the Senkaku islands that Japan claims as part of its sovereign territories and China claims as the Diaoyu islands. “I have to admit the timeline has not lived up to our expectations as originally envisaged,” the Japanese official said, with regard to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad rail project. However, he expressed confidence that the project is now “moving forward”. Construction of high-speed infrastructure is also developing steadily on the ground both in Mumbai and Gujarat, and we hope high-speed trains will start to move in a few years in India,” the official said, without giving a concrete timeline for the project’s completion. His comments come months after former Japanese Minister Hideki Makihara blamed the delay on the “sheer recklessness” of Indian officials, adding that Japan had been excluded from key safety components, such as the signalling system. Makihara’s remarks, the MoFA official said, “I don’t want to endorse any comments outside of the negotiation. He said that Japan is going ahead with works related to the “signal system, rail structure. The official maintained that Japan did not have a “negative” view of the recent BRICS summit in Delhi, which Chinese President Xi Jinping had attended. Most of the “controversial items” were either “contained or moderately addressed” under India’s chairmanship, he said.
