ਰਾਜਪੁਰਾਰਾਜਪੁਰਾ

Rajpura is a city in Patiala district of Punjab, India, standing where the Delhi to Amritsar highway and railway divide for the rest of Punjab. An old sarai town of Sher Shah Suri, it was rebuilt after 1947 as a planned township for refugees from Bahawalpur. The 2011 census counted 92,301 people.

Where is Rajpura?

Rajpura is in the east of Patiala district, close to the Haryana border, at 259 metres above sea level on the flat plain between the Ghaggar country and the Sirhind plain. It is the largest tehsil in Patiala district, and its Mini-Secretariat houses the sub-divisional offices, the courts and services for the sub-tehsil of Ghanaur, so villagers across the tehsil come here for government work. Patiala, the district headquarters, is about 26 kilometres west; Ambala is about 20 kilometres south, Chandigarh about 38 kilometres north-east and Ludhiana about 83 kilometres north. On National Highway 44 the city is the midpoint of the Delhi to Amritsar road: about 225 kilometres of highway run from Rajpura to each of those two cities, which is why its transport nagars, dhabas and warehouses never fully close.

History: a sarai town twice founded

Rajpura begins with a resting place. Between 1540 and 1545 Sher Shah Suri, founder of the Sur Empire and the great road builder of his age, raised a sarai here for his army on the imperial highway, and a settlement grew around the highway traffic it served. The sarai expanded rapidly in the 19th century, when Rajpura was briefly the largest administrative sub-division in Patiala district, and the old building still works for its living: it now houses the offices of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate. Old Rajpura, with its narrow lanes and traditional housing, is the part of the city that grew from that highway halt.

The second founding came with Partition. In 1947 and 1948 thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees from the princely state of Bahawalpur, now in Pakistan, reached this corner of Patiala State with little beyond their trading and craft skills. In April 1949 the Rajpura Development Ordinance created a planned township for them, with residential blocks, markets and industrial plots, and by the 1951 census the migration had transformed the town's population. Modern Rajpura is still read in three parts: Old Rajpura, the historic core; the Focal Point, its industrial zone; and the Township, the planned refugee settlement. The Bahawalpuri community the township housed still marks the city, in its food, its enterprise and, as the census shows below, in its languages.

Why is Rajpura called the Gateway of Punjab?

Rajpura is called the Gateway of Punjab because almost every road and rail route into the state passes through it. The city stands at the junction of National Highway 44, running from Delhi to Attari, and the highway from Chandigarh to Dabwali, which makes it a natural distribution centre for goods entering Punjab. By rail, Rajpura Junction is the first junction inside Punjab for a traveller coming from Delhi: here the main line divides, one branch running north to Ludhiana, Amritsar and Jammu, the other turning west to Patiala, Bathinda and Rajasthan. A town that began as a place where armies rested has become the place where a whole state's traffic changes direction.

Geography and people

The 2011 census counted 92,301 people in the municipal council, up from 82,956 in 2001 and 70,983 in 1991, on a council area of 25 square kilometres: 48,340 men and 43,961 women, a sex ratio of 909 women per 1,000 men. Children under seven numbered 9,922, about 11 per cent of the city. Literates numbered 71,192 among residents aged seven and above, an effective literacy rate of 86.42 per cent, well above the Punjab average of 75.84 per cent recorded in the same census. Scheduled Castes numbered 9,252, about 10 per cent of the city, and 32,845 residents were recorded as workers. The wider Rajpura tehsil, the district's largest, counted 391,011 people in 2011, most of them in villages farming wheat and paddy around the city.

By faith, Hindus form the city's majority at 70.60 per cent, with Sikhs at 27.51 per cent, Muslims at 1.39 per cent, Christians at 0.28 per cent and Jains at 0.08 per cent. The language count holds the city's Partition story: Punjabi was the first language of 60.66 per cent in 2011, Hindi of 20.27 per cent, and Saraiki of 18.51 per cent. That Saraiki share, unusually high for a Punjab city, is the Bahawalpuri inheritance: the speech the refugees brought from Bahawalpur, still heard in the township's homes and bazaars alongside the local Puadhi form of Punjabi.

Industry, logistics and the power plant

Agriculture, wheat and rice with dairy farming, remains the base of the tehsil, but the city itself is an industrial town. The Focal Point holds large plants, among them a Hindustan Unilever factory, and a dense belt of small industry: Rajpura is a recognised hub of steel works and machinery, and its furniture makers supply well-known brands. On the strength of its junction position the city is also growing as a warehousing and logistics hub for Punjab, and an Integrated Manufacturing Cluster of about 1,099 acres near the two highways has been announced to expand that role.

At Nalash village on the city's edge stands the Rajpura Thermal Power Project, run by Nabha Power: two supercritical coal units of 700 MW each, 1,400 MW in all, in operation since 2014 under a 25-year power purchase agreement with the Punjab State Power Corporation. The plant was built under Larsen and Toubro, and in 2026 Torrent Power completed its acquisition of Nabha Power from L&T Power Development, at an equity consideration of Rs 3,632 crore reported from the regulatory filing. An 800 MW third unit is at the pre-permit stage. Between the power plant, the Focal Point factories and the highway trade, Rajpura's economy reaches far beyond its grain market origins.

Places of interest

The old sarai of Sher Shah Suri, still housing the Sub-Divisional Magistrate's offices, is the city's founding monument, and the planned township's grid of markets and residential sectors is itself a readable document of Partition-era rehabilitation. At Nalas village stands the Swayambhu Temple, dedicated to Shiva: its name records the belief that the lingam here is self-born, sadhus have lived at the temple since the 15th century, a 65-foot sculpture of Shiva stands at the entrance, the temple rises above 100 feet, and it is dressed each year for Maha Shivratri. St. Thomas Catholic Church serves the city's Christians under the Diocese of Simla and Chandigarh, with the saint's feast on 3 July. The city is also home to an SOS Children's Village, described as the only orphanage centre of its kind in northern India.

Getting there and Rajpura today

Rajpura Junction (station code RPJ), under the Ambala division of Northern Railway, has three platforms and handled about 5,445 passengers a day in 2018. Electrification of its branch line was completed in stages: Rajpura to Dhuri in September 2019, and Dhuri to Lehra Muhabbat towards Bathinda in July 2020. Intercity buses of the PEPSU Road Transport Corporation, Chandigarh Transport Undertaking and Haryana Roadways tie the city to Patiala, Ambala, Chandigarh and Delhi, and Chandigarh Airport is about 28 kilometres away.

Today Rajpura is three towns in one boundary: a 16th century highway sarai, a Partition township that Bahawalpuri refugees built into a trading city, and a power, industry and logistics centre still expanding on the junction that made it. Few Punjab cities carry their two foundings so visibly, in an old core of lanes, a planned grid of refugee housing, and factory sheds along the highway out of town.