Mithapurਮਿਠਾਪੁਰ

Where is Mithapur?

Mithapur is a village and locality on the southern outskirts of Jalandhar city in the Doaba region of Punjab, along Mithapur Road past the city's Urban Estate neighbourhoods. Postal records place it in Jalandhar-II tehsil, with its own branch post office and PIN code 144022, under the Jalandhar Cantonment head office.

Unlike the revenue villages around it, Mithapur has no separate row in the Census 2011 village list: the census treated the adjoining Alipur and Mithapur area as an out growth of the Jalandhar municipal area, so there is no separate official population figure for Mithapur, and this page does not invent one. What defines the place is not its size but its ground.

A ground that hockey players treat as sacred

The Better India reported in 2021 that Mithapur's soil is held in such regard that hockey players from across Punjab visit the village ground and carry some of its soil back to their own grounds. The game took root here in the years after Independence, when the village was farmland with no television to watch: Kulbir Saini of Hockey Punjab told The Better India that boys played with sticks broken from crooked branches, balls made from crown flower trees, and trees for goalposts.

Hockey also runs through its families. Baaz News recorded in 2021 that Mandeep Singh's father Ravinder Singh played the game himself, and that Manpreet Singh was drawn to hockey by the prizes his elder brothers brought home from local tournaments.

Who are Mithapur's six Olympians?

Six, by The Better India's count: Swarup Singh, who played at Helsinki 1952; Kulwant Singh, at Munich 1972; Pargat Singh, at three Olympics, in 1988, 1992 and 1996; and the three who played together at Tokyo 2020, Manpreet Singh, Mandeep Singh and Varun Kumar.

Pargat Singh, born in Mithapur in 1965, is the village's defining figure: a fullback who, The Better India notes, was the first Indian to captain the national hockey team at two Olympics, in 1992 and 1996. He received the Arjuna Award in 1989 and the Padma Shri in 1998, and later served as Punjab's Director of Sports and as an MLA for Jalandhar Cantonment.

At Tokyo 2020, held in 2021, the three Mithapur players in India's team won bronze, the country's first Olympic hockey medal in 41 years. Manpreet Singh captained that team and carried the Indian flag at the opening ceremony, alongside boxer Mary Kom; he went on to win a second Olympic bronze at Paris 2024. Forward Mandeep Singh and defender Varun Kumar, who trained at the Surjit Hockey Academy in Jalandhar after two years at the Baba Sewa Singh Hockey Academy at Khadur Sahib, completed the village's Tokyo trio.

The stadium that came back from the sand

The village ground was not always a nursery. Pargat Singh told Tribune India that not long before its revival the stadium lay buried under three to four feet of sand and its rooms had become dens for drug users. As Punjab's Director of Sports he had Government of India funds sanctioned, the ground was levelled for the Surjit Hockey Academy, and village elders found 42 children to start training, coached by the international player Sukhminder Grewal with Sarabjit Singh Sabi, Amrik Singh and Surinder Pal.

By 2021, Baaz News found nearly 100 young players training at the Mithapur stadium in the morning and evening, some as young as six, and coach Sarabjit Singh Sabi arguing that its grass ground deserved an astroturf upgrade. That remains the village's standing ask.

Mithapur and the hockey homecoming of October 2026

International hockey returned to Punjab in October 2026, when Jalandhar hosted the league stage of the Asian Champions Trophy at the Olympian Surjit Singh Hockey Stadium, with India's league games running from 27 October to 2 November. Mithapur's most celebrated current player was missing from it: Manpreet Singh was ruled out with a calf injury days before the tournament, replaced by Vivek Sagar Prasad, with Harmanpreet Singh captaining India. The village was still represented on the pitch, where Mandeep Singh scored a hat-trick in India's 13-0 opening win over Bangladesh.

Visiting Mithapur

Mithapur is a short drive from central Jalandhar along Mithapur Road. There is no ticketed sight here: the place to see is the village stadium at training time, early morning or evening, when the ground fills with young players. The Jalandhar city page on this site covers the wider area's sights, including the Olympian Surjit Singh Hockey Stadium across the city.

Is Mithapur a village or part of Jalandhar city?

Both, in a way. It is a historic village with its own post office, ground and hockey tradition, but Jalandhar's growth has wrapped around it, and for census purposes it sits inside the city's urban area. That is why it carries a city PIN code and has no separate village population figure, and why its fame rests on its players rather than its size.