GMADA Eco City-4 / Sector 87 Commercial City — Real Estate and Investment Outlook

What Exists Today — And What Doesn't

Eco City-4 is, as of mid-2026, a land-acquisition notification — not a project buyers can enter. GMADA has issued a Section 4(1) notification for Eco City 4, covering 526.03 acres across four villages — Kartarpur, Kansala, Rajgarh, and Boothgarh — in the Kharar tehsil of Mohali district. This is the earliest stage of the compulsory land acquisition process under the LARR Act, 2013, and precedes the social impact assessment, the compensation award, and any allotment scheme. A dedicated tracker of the project states plainly: No public launch is possible for years and no authorised pre-booking exists.

Eco City-4 sits inside a much larger notified pipeline. The Punjab government — through GMADA — has set in motion the compulsory acquisition of over 11,103 acres across Greater Mohali and New Chandigarh, including seven new townships, seven new sectors, three new pockets of Aerotropolis, and a new commercial city centre in Sector 87, Mohali. Sector 87 (the "Commercial City" name used in some listings) is one part of that pipeline, not a separate project from Eco City-4 — both fall under the same wave of GMADA notifications issued through 2025–2026.

For farmers whose land falls inside the notified villages, the current stage offers two statutory choices rather than a sale: cash compensation under the 2013 Act, or the optional land-pooling route that returns developed plots in the future. For farmers in these villages, the practical implication is that different family members may have land in different acquisition tranches, some already under the Eco City 3 award, others now notified under Eco City 4.

How Land and Plots Are Expected to Be Released

The acquisition-to-allotment sequence GMADA has followed on every prior Eco City tranche gives the clearest picture of what to expect for Eco City-4 and Sector 87. A Section 4(1) notification is followed by objection hearings, a Social Impact Assessment, then a Section 19 compensation award, followed by farmer opt-in to land pooling or cash, then physical development, and only then plot allotment (via draw of lots for residential or e-auction for commercial). For Eco City-3 — the immediately preceding tranche — the proposed project entails taking over land of around 717 acres and would also be used for implementing residential, commercial, and institutional infrastructure, with a payout for the acquired land at around ₹3,690 crores, and tenders for development work are likely to be floated in the first quarter of 2026, with final launching likely by end of 2026, after the initial infrastructure development plan has been formulated. Eco City-4 is one to two stages further behind Eco City-3 in this same sequence.

The compensation framework itself has been revised twice in less than two years. The Punjab government earlier attempted a Land Pooling Policy in early 2025, under which farmers would receive developed plots instead of cash — this model triggered widespread farmer protests, the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued an interim stay, and the government withdrew the policy entirely in August 2025. In November 2025, a revised Land Pooling Policy was notified — made entirely optional — giving landowners a choice between statutory cash compensation and developed plots. A further revision followed in mid-2026: the July 6 notification converts those decisions into enforceable policy, adjusting entitlement sizes upward.

Sector 87's commercial-city component is being acquired under a separate but parallel land-pooling track. GMADA will develop new sectors 84, 87, 103, 120–124 and part of 101, with Sector 84 as institutional, Sector 87 as commercial, Sectors 101 and 103 as industrial, and the remaining sectors as residential. That scheme was designed to move faster than standard acquisition: GMADA Chief Administrator Vishesh Sarangal said the land would be acquired within four to six months under the new land pooling scheme, which otherwise would have taken two years under the old Land Acquisition Act — though this projected timeline predates the 2025 protests and policy withdrawal described above, and should be treated as an official target rather than a delivered outcome.

Land Use Split in the Parent Scheme

The 6,284.89-acre scheme that includes Sector 87 was broken down by GMADA into three broad allocation blocks at the time of notification (June 2025): 3,535 acres from Block E to J of the already developed Aerotropolis township, 1,890 acres in Sector 120 to 124, and 859.89 acres in Sector 84, 87, 101 (part), 103 and missing areas of Sector 76 to 80. This is a parent-scheme split, not an Eco City-4-specific breakdown — Eco City-4's 526 acres is a separate, later notification for residential use in New Chandigarh.

Precedent: What Happened to Values and Timelines in Earlier GMADA Townships

Eco City-1 (delivered). The scheme launched in 2011 for the allotment of 836 residential plots evoked overwhelming response as approximately 1,60,000 applications were received; Eco City Phase-I was developed on 400 acres acquired under 100% Land Pooling, so none of the farmers were uprooted. Development was carried out by M/s Larsen & Toubro Ltd at a total project cost of Rs. 151 crores, of which Rs. 50 crores had already been spent on roads and Public Health, Electrical and Horticulture services. By 2025–26, resale listings put 500 sq yard plots in Eco City-1 and 2 trading between ₹4.80 crore and ₹6.50 crore, and smaller 100 sq yard plots ranging from ₹95 lakh to ₹1.35 crore, with the official Collector Rate recently hiked to ₹65,000 per sq. yard, the benchmark used for registration and taxes. These are secondary-market figures reported by property portals, not GMADA-published sale data, and should be read as indicative rather than official.

Eco City-3 (delayed, still not launched as a public scheme). GMADA's Eco City-3 project, first announced in 2016, was planned across approximately 750 acres in nine villages, but in 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, GMADA scrapped land acquisition for Eco City-3 citing fund shortages and poor farmer response to the land pooling scheme. The project was later revived; the compensation award was Rs 3,690.32 crore for 716 acres of Eco City-3, declared in December 2025, with plot launch not expected before end-2026 — roughly a decade after the original 2016 announcement. This is the closest documented precedent for how long an Eco City tranche can take from announcement to allotment.

Aerotropolis (partially active, secondary-market only). GMADA's other flagship, the 5,500-acre GMADA-planned airport township, is one of the largest planned townships in Punjab and the first airport-centric development in the state. Aerotropolis plots are not sold directly — they are allotted through a government scheme, and investors buy and sell LOI (Letter of Intent) documents in the secondary market, with an LOI confirming plot allotment ahead of registry. Mid-2026 dealer-reported rates were Pocket A residential Rs.50,000-57,000/sqyd; Pocket B Rs.40,000-43,000; Pocket C Rs.38,000-41,000; Pocket D Rs.37,000-40,000; commercial Pocket A Rs.65,000-70,000/sqyd — again secondary-market, dealer-sourced figures rather than official allotment prices.

Region-wide land value effect of notifications. The Tribune reported that officials described the compensation revision as favourable to farmers, noting agricultural land was valued at approximately Rs 5 crore per acre before acquisition notifications began; after notifications, values moved to approximately Rs 8 crore per acre, and the developed plots a farmer receives under the policy carry a combined estimated market value of approximately Rs 16 crore per acre — but the same report cautions that whether that figure is realised depends on whether the development actually happens and when.

Key Risks

• Compensation and valuation disputes. The most recent policy revision was partly driven by documented irregularities in how trees and structures were valued for compensation; a new policy mandates satellite and drone imagery as the baseline for all tree and structure valuation, after fraud in orchard assessment was made possible by the absence of any independent verification mechanism.
• Policy reversal risk. The land-pooling framework itself has been rewritten twice in under two years, including one outright withdrawal after a High Court stay — the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued an interim stay on the earlier compulsory pooling model, and the government withdrew the policy entirely in August 2025.
• Farmer protest and negotiation risk. Residual grievances among a section of farmers led to a Pucca Morcha, a three-week permanent dharna and chain hunger strike outside GMADA headquarters, which ended after the government agreed to a further enhanced package of benefits — a pattern that has recurred across multiple Eco City tranches and can delay notification-to-award timelines by months.
• Timeline slippage. Eco City-3 is the clearest documented case: announced in 2016, it was scrapped in 2020 and only reached a compensation award in December 2025 — a near-decade gap between announcement and the first concrete step toward allotment.
• Litigation on adjacent blocks. Block A of the existing Aerotropolis project has faced past litigation, contributing to phased delays, illustrating that even acquired and part-developed GMADA land can carry unresolved legal exposure.
• Implementation risk on new commitments. Commentary on the latest policy notes a timeline without teeth has not historically moved GMADA, and the farmers of Greater Mohali have watched two earlier versions of this policy promise outcomes that did not materialise on time — a caution equally relevant to buyers waiting on future allotments.

Signals to Watch

• Publication of the Social Impact Assessment and Section 19 compensation award for the four Eco City-4 villages (the next formal step after the June 2026 Section 4(1) notification).
• Whether the promised three-year development timeline and village infrastructure integration commitments for Eco City-4 are converted into a separate, legally binding notification, as the Tribune report says is still required: the village development commitment needs a separate formal notification, making it legally binding and specifying which department is responsible for each component.
• Tender floats and infrastructure contract awards for Eco City-3, which is one stage ahead and gives a live read on how fast GMADA can move from award to construction — tenders were expected in the first quarter of 2026.
• GMADA's own notifications page and Sector 87 objection-hearing outcomes, since Acquisition of land setting up Commercial Infrastructure in Sector 87 at SAS Nagar was still at the Section 15 objections-hearing stage in recent GMADA filings.
• Uptake rate of the optional land-pooling choice among Eco City-4 farmers versus cash compensation, which will indicate how much of the 526 acres actually converts into future developed plots versus land that stays under private/panchayat control.