ਲੁਧਿਆਣਾ ਪੱਛਮੀ ਤਹਿਸੀਲਲੁਧਿਆਣਾ ਪੱਛਮੀ ਤਹਿਸੀਲ

Where is Ludhiana West Tehsil?

Ludhiana West Tehsil is a tehsil of Ludhiana district in the Malwa region of Punjab, India, headquartered at Ludhiana city and covering its western and southern countryside, with 127 villages and seven small towns including Mullanpur Dakha and Gill. At the Census of 2011 it counted 362,602 people, mostly rural.

The tehsil sits on the Malwa alluvial plain south of the Sutlej river. At district level the river forms the northern boundary of Ludhiana district, separating it from Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur districts, with Moga district to the west, Rupnagar to the east and Sangrur and Patiala to the south. Inside the district, this tehsil runs from the western and southern edges of Ludhiana city out towards Jagraon on the Ferozepur road and south towards the Pakhowal and Raikot side, through close settled farming villages whose nearest towns, in the village directory, are Ludhiana, Mullanpur Dakha and Raikot.

The old population figure on this page, 362,602 people in 2011, is verified, and it reconciles exactly: 272,489 rural people plus 90,113 urban people equals 362,602, in 72,514 households. Two cautions run through everything below. One listing prose swaps the rural and urban shares, printing 75.15 percent as urban; the tables behind it show the opposite, 75.15 percent rural and 24.85 percent urban, and this page follows the tables. And the sources do not all measure the same ground the same way: the tehsil area is 543 square kilometres in the census frame and 556.5 in a geospatial reckoning, and the sex ratio prints as 896 in one listing and 897 in another. Each figure below is kept with its own frame, never merged.

Two Ludhianas: why East is five times West

Ludhiana district is divided into seven tehsils, Samrala, Khanna, Payal, Ludhiana East, Ludhiana West, Raikot and Jagraon, all with sub divisional status in the district handbook, alongside seven sub tehsils that include Mullanpur Dakha, which sits inside this tehsil. The two city tehsils look like twins on the map and are opposites in the census. Ludhiana East counted 1,934,225 people in 2011, more than five times this tehsil, and the handbook names it the most populous tahsil of the district.

The reason is where the city itself was counted. The whole Ludhiana Municipal Corporation, 1,618,879 people, was counted inside Ludhiana East: its urban total of 1,654,537 is exactly the corporation plus Sahnewal Nagar Panchayat at 22,484 and Bhamian Kalan census town at 13,174, against 279,688 rural people in 184 villages. Ludhiana West has no share of the corporation at all. Its urban population is only the 90,113 people of its seven small towns, so a tehsil that shares the headquarters city reads as a countryside tehsil: 75.15 percent rural, Sikh majority, with Ludhiana East at 85.54 percent urban and Hindu majority on the same district page. The city account lists both tehsils under Ludhiana city, because the city is the headquarters and market for both, but the census counted its people in the East.

Mullanpur Dakha, Gill and the towns of the tehsil

The seven towns sum exactly to the urban 90,113: Gill census town 28,884, Mullanpur Dakha Nagar Panchayat 16,356, Tharike census town 12,294, Bhattian census town 11,066, Partap Singhwala census town 10,843, Baddowal census town 6,825 and Jodhan census town 3,845. Six of the seven are new in census terms: the handbook jurisdictional table shows this tehsil going from one town in 2001 to seven in 2011, with six villages treated as census towns, while its village count fell from 133 to 127 for the same reason.

Mullanpur Dakha, also called Mandi Mullanpur, is the tehsil town with a name of its own: a nagar panchayat and grain market town on the Ferozepur road west of the city, at about 30.84 degrees north and 75.67 degrees east, PIN 141101, serving as a marketplace for the villages around it, among them Mullanpur, Dakha, Jangpur, Raqba and Mohi villages from this tehsil village list. Its account names Gurdwara Mashkiana Sahib as its best known gurdwara, and Guru Teg Bahadur National College at Dakha among its colleges. Gill, the largest town, is a census town on the city side of the tehsil, bigger than the nagar panchayat itself, a sign of how the city edge, not the old mandi town, now holds the tehsil largest urban crowd.

Villages, blocks and the people of the tehsil

The village directory for the tehsil, sub district code 00228 in the census frame used by the directory, lists 127 village records, of which 125 are inhabited, covering the 272,489 rural people in 54,288 households over 58,297.16 hectares, with 116 gram panchayats. Its villages sit in seven community development blocks, Dehlon, Jagraon, Ludhiana I, Ludhiana II, Pakhowal, Sidhwan Bet and Sudhar, which is why block and tehsil lines must not be confused: the handbook counts twelve blocks in the whole district, while a current directory listing counts fourteen, adding names such as Mullanpur and Koom Kalan. The largest village is Dhandra with 14,972 people in 3,050 households; the handbook names Dhandra the largest village of the whole district. Dad follows at 9,932 and Phullanwal at 9,927, and the largest village by land is Gujjarwal at 5,194 hectares with 4,947 people, its nearest town given as Raikot.

In faith this is the Sikh countryside of the district: Sikhs were 68.68 percent in 2011, 249,024 people, followed by Hindus at 28.75 percent, 104,257 people, Muslims at 1.39 percent, Christians at 0.48 percent and Jains at 0.13 percent. Scheduled Castes were 37.46 percent of the tehsil, 135,813 people, with no Scheduled Tribe population recorded. The sex ratio was 896 women per 1,000 men in one census listing and 897 in another, a rounding difference on the same count of 191,203 men and 171,399 women; the rural ratio was 900, against 886 or 887 in the towns. Children aged 0 to 6 numbered 40,233, or 11.10 percent, with a child sex ratio of 873. Workers numbered 130,613, about 36.02 percent of the population, 104,976 of them men and 25,637 women.

Two literacy figures circulate for this tehsil and both are given here with their basis. One census listing gives 71.82 percent, men 75.36 percent and women 67.88 percent, counted against the whole population; another gives 80.79 percent, men 84.90 percent and women 76.21 percent, the effective rate counted against the population aged seven and above, with 260,430 literate people among 322,369 residents of that age, urban literacy 81.61 percent and rural 80.52 percent on that basis. Punjabi is the tehsil language: at district level 79.65 percent of Ludhiana district spoke Punjabi as a first language in 2011 and 18.19 percent Hindi, with Hindi spoken mainly in urban areas.

Farming, industry and the headquarters city

The headquarters city shapes this tehsil even though its people were counted in the East. Ludhiana is the most populous city of Punjab, 1,618,879 people in 2011, at about 30.91 degrees north and 75.85 degrees east and 247 metres above sea level, founded in 1480 under the Lodhi dynasty on the old bank of the Sutlej, whose present course now runs about 13 kilometres north of the city. The district account names bicycle parts and hosiery as its main industries; the city account calls it Asia largest hub for bicycle manufacturing, producing more than half of India bicycles each year, with hosiery, apparel, auto and tractor parts beside it. Its factories and markets are the daily destination for workers, students and traders from the villages counted above.

The tehsil itself is Malwa farmland on the Sutlej alluvial plain, the district topography of flood plain and upland plain levelled by its farmers, and its small towns work as the farm economy floor: Mullanpur Dakha as the grain mandi, Gill and the other census towns as the city edge settlements, and villages such as Dakha, Chhapar and Gujjarwal farming some of the closest settled land in Punjab. The assembly map carries the tehsil names at district level: among the fourteen assembly constituencies of Ludhiana district are Ludhiana West, Gill and Dakha, all three names drawn from this side of the district.

Getting there

Roads run west and south from the headquarters city through the tehsil. Mullanpur Dakha stands on National Highway 5, the Ferozepur road, with bus services to Ludhiana, Moga and Bathinda, and the same corridor carries traffic on towards Jagraon and Moga. The town has its own railway station, with Ludhiana Junction about 19 kilometres away by the town account. For flights the town account points to Chandigarh airport, about 134 kilometres away, and Amritsar airport, about 167 kilometres away; this page does not claim the district airport at Sahnewal for this tehsil, because the sources opened for this page place it on the eastern side of the city and no source opened here puts it in Ludhiana West.