ਬਾਘਾ ਪੁਰਾਣਾਬਾਘਾ ਪੁਰਾਣਾ

Bagha Purana is a tehsil town in Moga district of Punjab's Malwa region, about 22 kilometres from Moga city. Home to 25,206 people at the 2011 census, it is the grain-mandi and administrative centre for the south of the district, a role it has held since it became a tehsil on 31 December 1997.

Where is Bagha Purana?

Bagha Purana stands at the crossing of the Moga-Kotkapura road and the Mudki-Nihal Singh Wala road, in the Malwa belt of Punjab. It sits about 22 kilometres from Moga city, 30 kilometres from Kotkapura, 20 kilometres from Nihal Singh Wala and 33 kilometres from Faridkot. The town's coordinates are 30.68° N, 75.10° E, its PIN is 142038, and Punjabi is the official language. As the headquarters of Bagha Purana tehsil, it is the bazaar, court and office town for the villages around it.

ਇਤਿਹਾਸ

The town began as a small settlement of three pattis: Bagha Patti, Purana Patti and Mughlu Patti, at the road crossing where two routes met. It stayed mostly a village until the early 1970s, then began to grow as a market. A Nagar Panchayat was constituted in 1978, later upgraded to a Municipal Council. On 31 December 1997, 57 villages were carved out of Moga and Nihal Singh Wala subdivisions to form the new Bagha Purana tehsil, with the town as its headquarters, and tehsil-level government offices followed. Two years earlier, on 24 November 1995, Moga district itself had been carved out of Faridkot district under Chief Minister Harcharan Singh Brar, with the Moga and Bagha Purana tehsils forming the new district. The GLADA master plan describes Bagha Purana as the second largest town of Moga district and an important commercial centre, with a local planning area covering 32,322 hectares.

Geography & people

The 2011 census counted 25,206 residents in Bagha Purana town. It lies in Malwa's wheat, paddy and cotton country, and the town's life follows the crop calendar. The town police station is reported to cover more than 65 villages, one of the largest police jurisdictions in Punjab.

Markets, economy and today

Bagha Purana's reason for being is trade. Its grain mandi draws wheat and paddy from the surrounding villages, and rice shellers, cattle feed plants and flour mills have grown up around that trade. Rice mills and cold stores, commission agents, transporters and financiers make up the rest of the agro economy, and local listings note bank branches serving families whose relatives live in Canada and Australia. As the tehsil headquarters, the town also houses the Tehsil Administrative and Judicial Court Complex on Mudki Road, the Municipal Council office, a Sewa Kendra and block-level offices. For schools it has Guru Nanak College and Guru Nanak Mission College for Girls on Mudki Road, government senior secondary schools and several convent schools; the 2011 master plan notes there is no engineering college in the planning area.

Places of interest

The town's religious life centres on its gurdwaras. Photo records name Gurdwara Sant Baba Gurmel Singh and Gurdwara Charan Kanwal Sahib at Bagha Patti, and there is a Shiv Mandir on Moga Road. A few kilometres north, at Chand Purana village in Bagha Purana tehsil, stands Gurdwara Shaheed Baba Tega Singh Ji, a well-known gurdwara whose dioramas depict scenes of Sikh martyrdom, including the Chhota Ghallughara and figures such as Bhai Taru Singh, Baba Moti Ram Mehra and Bota Singh.

Getting there

Bagha Purana has no railway station of its own. The nearest station is at Moga, about 22 kilometres away, on the Ludhiana-Firozpur-Fazilka line of Northern Railway. By road the town does well: it lies on the Moga-Faridkot road and works as a bus hub, with public and private buses running across Punjab.

Notable people

Bagha Purana is known more for its mandi than for famous names; no singer, writer or athlete verifiably born in the town surfaced in reliable sources. Its assembly constituency, No. 72, is represented by Amritpal Singh Sukhanand of the Aam Aadmi Party, who won the 2022 Punjab election with 67,143 votes. The area also claims a link to Major Malkit Singh Brar, a posthumous Maha Vir Chakra recipient killed at Poonch in February 1948: some secondary sources say he was born in Bagha Purana, but the dedicated gallantry record Honourpoint traces him to Alamwala village in neighbouring Faridkot district, so the town connection is best treated as a local association rather than a fact.