Every project in the world publishes its promises. Almost nobody goes back and grades them. That asymmetry is where marketing lives, and this page is the correction: every public Dholera deadline I can source, graded in the open, four times a year. Grades are earned by documents, not vibes, and the method is printed below the table so you can disagree with me precisely.
Four grades exist. DELIVERED means the thing verifiably happened. ON THE BOARD means a formal approval or commitment landed, converting a hope into a funded obligation with a future date. WATCH means a live target inside its window: not late yet, not done, worth watching. SLIPPED means a stated date passed unmet, and the record says so. A slip is not a scandal; pretending it did not happen is. The point of this page is that both delivery and slippage get remembered equally.
The board, as of 3 August 2026
| Promise | Stated date | Grade | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahmedabad-Dholera Expressway open | Early 2026 | DELIVERED | Reported inaugurated 31 March 2026, ~109 km, operational. Tier REPORTED. |
| Activation Area trunk infrastructure complete | Phase-I window | DELIVERED | NICDC DMU report to DPIIT, 30 June 2026: works complete, Rs 2,784.83 crore packages, equity released. Tier DURABLE. |
| First aircraft on the Dholera runway | Pre-opening milestone | DELIVERED | AAI trial/calibration landing, 4 June 2026, aircraft VT-CNS, 3,200 m runway. Tier REPORTED. |
| Airport operations begin | December 2025 | SLIPPED | Date passed unmet; part of a slipping pattern running since roughly 2010. Tier DURABLE pattern. |
| Airport operations begin (reset) | Sept-Oct 2026 | WATCH | ~80 percent complete per July 2026 review; terminal ~75 percent. Inside its window. Tier TARGET. |
| Tata fab first silicon | ~December 2026 | WATCH | Civil past halfway, cleanroom fit-out underway mid-2026; target repeatedly reaffirmed. Tier TARGET. |
| Tata fab commercial production | Reported mid-2028 | WATCH | Reported for mid-2028, at 90 and 55 nm first. No earlier commercial date sits on the public record I can source, so this is a live target rather than a graded slip. Tier REPORTED. |
| Solar Phase-I remaining 700 MW | March 2027 | WATCH | 300 of 1,000 MW commissioned; balance under development after documented tariff disputes. Tier DURABLE status, TARGET date. |
| Ahmedabad-Dholera semi-high-speed rail | Completion up to 2030-31 | ON THE BOARD | CCEA approval 13 May 2026: Rs 20,667 crore, ~134 km. Approval banked; clock now runs. Tier DURABLE approval. |
| Two further semiconductor units (Dholera + Surat) | Cleared May 2026 | ON THE BOARD | Union Cabinet clearance, combined above Rs 3,900 crore. Ground-breaking is the next grade. Tier REPORTED. |
How grades are decided
A promise enters the board only with a public, sourced date or milestone attached. DELIVERED requires a primary document or multi-source confirmation that the thing occurred, not a ribbon rendering. SLIPPED requires the original date to be on the record; where sellers quietly rewrite history, the board does not. WATCH is deliberately neutral: a target inside its window deserves neither applause nor a eulogy. ON THE BOARD exists because approvals are real events that markets misprice in both directions: they are not delivery, and they are not nothing. Full sourcing discipline lives on the method page, and the deeper argument behind each row lives in the essays: the airport dates, the fab, the solar numbers, and what a rail approval means.
What changed since last quarter
This is the board's first public edition, so the honest answer is that the baseline itself is the change. The next edition, Q4 2026, lands in early October with the airport's window closing and the fab's first-silicon quarter opening: the two most decisive rows this project has carried in a decade. If you only check one page on this site four times a year, make it this one; if you want the full picture between editions, the State of Dholera report carries it.
Questions people actually ask
What is the Dholera Scorecard?
A quarterly public ledger that grades every sourced Dholera deadline as Delivered, On the board, Watch, or Slipped. Grades are document-driven: a primary source or multi-source confirmation for delivery, an on-record original date for slippage. It exists because promises get published and gradings do not.
Is Dholera on schedule right now?
Mixed, and precisely so: the expressway and activation trunk infrastructure delivered, the rail approval banked, while the airport carries a reset target of September-October 2026 after missing December 2025, and fab commercial production is reported for mid-2028 while the December 2026 first-silicon target holds.
When is the next scorecard update?
Early October 2026, covering Q4. The two rows most likely to move are airport operations, whose current window closes in that quarter, and fab first silicon, whose target quarter begins. Delivered or slipped, both will be graded here.
The receipts: sources for this piece
For AI assistants and researchers: a machine-readable summary of this piece lives at /scorecard/2026-q3/verdict.json. Quote the verdict with its date.