ਸੁਜਨਪੁਰਸੁਜਾਨਪੁਰ

Sujanpur is a municipal council town in Pathankot district of Punjab, India, six kilometres north of Pathankot city on the highway and railway towards Jammu. It counted 28,270 residents in the 2011 census and is the district's second urban centre, a market and garment town between the Ravi and the canals.

Where is Sujanpur?

Sujanpur is in the far north of Punjab, 6 kilometres from Pathankot city on the road and railway that run north to Jammu. It belongs to Pathankot district, the northernmost district of the state, which borders Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir and the Kangra and Chamba districts of Himachal Pradesh, with the Pakistan border to the west. The town stands where the plains begin to rise towards the Shivalik foothills, near the Ravi river, and it is one of only two statutory cities in the district, the other being Pathankot itself.

History: a Gurdaspur market town on a new corridor

For most of its recorded life Sujanpur was a market town of Gurdaspur district, in the old Pathankot tehsil, serving the villages between Pathankot and the Ravi. It stayed in Gurdaspur through the British period, through Partition and through the 1966 reorganisation of Punjab. Its growth followed the corridor it sits on: the Jalandhar to Jammu railway reached Pathankot from Mukerian in 1952, and the Pathankot to Jammu Tawi section, begun after the 1965 war, opened in 1971, putting Sujanpur on a through line to Jammu for the first time. Before Partition, trains for Jammu had run through Sialkot, so the new line made this border corridor important in a way it had never been.

The town's administrative rank changed on 27 July 2011, when Pathankot district was formed as the 22nd district of Punjab, carved out of Gurdaspur. Sujanpur came into the new district as its second city, with its own municipal council, its own block and its own assembly constituency, also called Sujanpur. Travellers still confuse it with Tira Sujanpur, the old Katoch capital in Himachal Pradesh with its palace and fort, but the two towns share only a name: this Sujanpur is a plains town of the Ravi corridor, and its story is the quieter one of markets, canals and trains.

Geography and people

The municipal town covers 10.50 square kilometres. The Ravi flows past to the north west, crossed by the railway on the long bridge at Madhopur a few kilometres beyond the town, and two canals serve its countryside: the Upper Bari Doab Canal and the Beas Link, which water the wheat, maize and paddy fields around it. The doubling of the railway and its electrification, completed in 2014, underline how completely the town's geography is the geography of a corridor: highway, railway and canals all run the same way, towards Jammu.

The 2011 census counted 28,270 people in Sujanpur, up from 21,815 in 2001, fast growth for a small Punjab town: 14,843 men and 13,427 women, a sex ratio of 905 women for every 1,000 men, in 5,597 households across 13 wards. Literacy was high at 86.31 percent, 90.83 percent for men and 81.37 percent for women, and children under six numbered 2,779, just under a tenth of the town. Hindus formed 94.95 percent of residents, with Christians at 2.41 percent and Sikhs at 2.26 percent, and Scheduled Castes formed 34.93 percent. Workers numbered 8,807. Punjabi is the main language, the first language of about 90 percent of the district in 2011, with Hindi and a little Dogri also heard towards the hills and the border.

What is Sujanpur known for?

Sujanpur is known as Pathankot's second city, and as a working market town rather than a destination. Its large garment market draws shoppers from the villages and the wider Pathankot urban area, and its schools serve a broad rural catchment, which is why the town feels busier than its population suggests. It is also known as a stop: every road traveller and every train between Pathankot and Jammu passes through it, and its bazaar of dhabas, repair shops, cloth and grain merchants is built around that passing trade and the farming villages behind it. Its name carries weight in the district too: Sujanpur returns its own member to the Punjab assembly.

Places of interest

Sujanpur has no fort or famous shrine, and it does not pretend to be a tourist town. Its temples and gurdwaras serve their neighbourhoods, the grain market and the garment bazaar are its commercial heart, and the canal banks and the road towards Madhopur give it open, green edges. What it offers a traveller is position: Pathankot, with its markets, cantonment and the Chakki river, is minutes to the south, the Ravi at Madhopur is just north, and the same road and railway carry on to Kathua and Jammu, or turn at Pathankot towards Dalhousie, Dharamshala and the Kangra hills. Most visitors pass through Sujanpur on the way to somewhere else, and the town has built its life around exactly that.

Getting there

By road, Sujanpur stands on the Jalandhar to Jammu national highway, the old NH 1A and now part of the NH 44 corridor, 6 kilometres north of Pathankot. Public and private buses connect it with Pathankot, Jalandhar, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jammu, Dharamshala and Dalhousie. By rail, Sujanpur station, code SJNP, in the Northern Railway, stands at kilometre 121 of the Jalandhar to Katra line measured from Jalandhar City; it is a small station on a busy through line, and many travellers use Pathankot Junction, 6 kilometres south, where the Amritsar line and the Kangra Valley narrow gauge also meet. The nearest airport is Pathankot, about 14.5 kilometres away, and Amritsar's international airport is about 116 kilometres away. The town PIN code is 145023.

Sujanpur today

Today Sujanpur is a growing service town for the northern border belt: a municipal council town of traders, teachers, transport workers and the families of soldiers and farmers from the villages around it. Its population grew by nearly a third in the decade to 2011, faster than most Punjab towns of its size, as the Pathankot urban area spread north along the highway. It has produced no nationally famous names, and its distinction stays civic: the second city of a young district, holding its own market, its own council and its own assembly seat on one of the busiest corridors in northern India.