Mohaliਮੋਹਾਲੀ

Mohali, officially Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, is a planned city in Punjab's Puadh region, lying immediately south-west of Chandigarh. It is the headquarters of SAS Nagar district and, with Chandigarh and Panchkula, forms the tricity. The city grew from Mohali village and is officially named for Sahibzada Ajit Singh, the eldest son of Guru Gobind Singh.

Where is Mohali?

Mohali sits on the plains below the Shivalik hills, in the south-eastern corner of Punjab, and its streets run straight into Chandigarh: the two cities are one continuous urban spread, divided only by the boundary between Punjab and the Union Territory. Chandigarh is its nearest city and daily partner. Around it, SAS Nagar district touches Rupnagar district to the north-west and Haryana to the south and east. Delhi lies about 265 kilometres to the south-east by the Ambala highway, and Ludhiana roughly 100 kilometres west. The city stands about 316 metres above sea level.

From village to planned city

The name Mohali means a settlement, and a village stood here long before the city. It lay among the Cis-Sutlej states, in the countryside east of the Sutlej. Guru Har Rai, the seventh Guru, visited the village of Lambian, now within the city, and Gurdwara Amb Sahib keeps that memory alive. At Sohana, on the city's southern edge, the Nihang leader Baba Hanuman Singh and some five hundred Sikhs fell fighting British forces, a stand remembered at Gurdwara Singh Shaheedan.

The modern city begins with Chandigarh. Partition left Indian Punjab without a capital, so Chandigarh was built as the new one from Puadhi-speaking villages, and in 1966 it became a Union Territory. Punjab then planned a city of its own beside it. The land around Mohali village was first developed as an industrial estate in 1967, and the plan soon widened into a full residential township. On 1 November 1975 the chief minister, Giani Zail Singh, laid the township's foundation stone and named it Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, after the Guru's eldest son, who was martyred at Chamkaur in 1704.

For thirty years the growing city remained in Rupnagar district. In April 2006 it became the headquarters of the new SAS Nagar district, carved out of Rupnagar and Patiala districts. The union government briefly renamed the city Ajitgarh in 2012, but Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar stayed the official name, and almost everyone still simply calls it Mohali.

Phases, sectors and the tricity

Mohali was designed as an extension of Chandigarh's sector grid, on blocks of roughly 800 by 1,200 metres. Its oldest neighbourhoods are called Phases: Phase 1 is Sector 55 of the shared grid, and the numbering climbs to Phase 11 at Sector 65. Building first reached Phase 7; Phase 8 began in the late 1980s, and the city's bus terminal came up as Phase 8 grew in the mid-1990s.

The Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) master plan now looks as far as Sector 128. Aerocity, beside the airport, and IT City, spread over some 1,600 acres in Sectors 82, 82A and 83A, are the newest quarters, and old villages such as Balongi, Sohana and Mataur now sit inside the planned city. The 2011 census counted 146,213 people in the municipal corporation area and 176,152 in the wider urban agglomeration, and growth since then has been rapid.

Mohali, Chandigarh and Panchkula in Haryana work as a single urban region, the tricity. They share an airport, bus networks and one labour market, and planners treat Mohali as part of the Chandigarh Capital Region. For most residents the three cities are one daily world: home in Mohali, work or college across an invisible line in Chandigarh.

Work: IT, pharma and industry

The city began with industry. Punjab Tractors, maker of the Swaraj tractor, Punjab Communications and paint and engineering units gave the industrial estate its shape, and small and medium firms remain its backbone. Pharmaceuticals became a second pillar, with companies such as Torque Pharmaceuticals based here and medicine units spread across the district.

Alongside it grew a knowledge economy. QuarkCity, a 46-acre special economic zone built by the software company Quark, drew technology firms in, and IT City is carrying that growth forward. In the Knowledge City at Sector 81 stand IISER Mohali, the national science institute, and the Mohali campus of the Indian School of Business; NIPER is the national institute for pharmaceutical research, Plaksha University and Amity University sit in IT City, and the Dr B. R. Ambedkar State Institute of Medical Sciences gives the city a government medical college.

All this work has made Mohali a magnet for migrants from across Punjab and beyond. The city is bilingual in daily life: at the 2011 census about two-thirds of its people gave Punjabi as their mother tongue and about a quarter gave Hindi, with Puadhi the local Punjabi dialect.

Cricket city

For much of India, Mohali means cricket. The Punjab Cricket Association stadium, now the PCA IS Bindra Stadium, was planned in 1990 and built over about three years at a cost of some 25 crore rupees. Its floodlight masts are famously kept low so that aircraft using the nearby airport are not troubled, and the ground holds about 30,000 spectators. It is the home of the Punjab Kings. In March 2011 it hosted the World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan, the match that fixed Mohali in the cricketing world's imagination. The International Hockey Stadium stands in Phase 9, the city counts eight multi-purpose sports complexes, and the newer Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium at Mullanpur, in the same district, now shares the big matches.

Places of interest

Gurdwara Amb Sahib, in Sector 62, marks the visit of Guru Har Rai and his meeting with his devotee Bhai Kuram; the amb in its name is the Punjabi word for mango. Gurdwara Singh Shaheedan at Sohana honours Baba Hanuman Singh and his companions, and the old Shri Shiv Mandir stands in Phase 1. A short drive west, at Chappar Chiri, rises Fateh Burj: at 100 metres (328 feet) it is the tallest victory tower in India, raised where Banda Singh Bahadur defeated the Mughal commander Wazir Khan in 1710. For quieter hours there are the Nature Park in Phase 8 and the Rose Garden in Phase 3B1, and every phase has its own market, where the city's everyday life is on display.

Getting there

Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport, whose terminal stands on the Mohali side near Aerocity, links the whole tricity to the rest of India and to international destinations. Mohali railway station, in Phase 11, has trains to Delhi, Ludhiana and Amritsar. By road, the city's bus terminal and Chandigarh Transport Undertaking buses bind Mohali into the tricity, while highways run south through Zirakpur towards Delhi and west through Kharar towards Ludhiana.