Dhami cites 1,002-acre Khurpia cluster at CII Uttarakhand summit

What Dhami said at the summit

Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami attended the 7th CII Uttarakhand Industrial Summit and Expo 2026 in Haridwar on Thursday, 8 October 2026, according to ANI's dateline. In his speech he said an Integrated Manufacturing Cluster is being developed on around 1,002 acres at Khurpia in Udham Singh Nagar district, and that the project would add investment and employment opportunities.

He tied the cluster to the state's wider industrial push. He described the government's role as a facilitator, pointed to a single-window system with more than 206 services from 26 departments online, and referred to a Rs 200 crore venture fund for startups under the Uttarakhand Startup Policy.

The MSME and jobs figure

The 1.27 lakh youth figure was a statewide claim. Dhami said more than 29,000 new MSME units had been set up in Uttarakhand in recent years and had given work to around 1.27 lakh young people. Reports of the speech did not link this number to the Khurpia site, so readers should not treat it as Khurpia employment.

Who is behind the project

The NICDC project page describes Khurpia Farm as a 1,002-acre Integrated Manufacturing Cluster under the Amritsar Kolkata Industrial Corridor. NICDC is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (DPIIT) that runs the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme. An earlier Cabinet approval covering 12 industrial smart cities, including Khurpia, was reported in a news article that did not show a date in the retrieved copy.

At the August 2026 apex monitoring meeting of the National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT), the CM said the state was committed to the project's timely completion. In that meeting, he also asked the Government of India and the special purpose vehicle formed by NICDIT for cooperation.

Status as of October 2026

The most recent status reports come from August 2026. They say the EPC contract was executed on 20 March 2026 and construction has started. The CM also said 24.1 km of right of way had been cleared and handed over to the EPC contractor. He said trunk infrastructure is proposed for completion by December 2028. He also said NICDC held full possession of the 1,002 acres and that no obstacles remained at the site. These are statements by the CM, not independently verified.

The October 2026 summit coverage did not report a new formal step such as approval, allotment or notification.

Site and infrastructure details

NICDC lists the site as 17 km east of Rudrapur, in Kichha tehsil, near NH-09, NH-109 and SH-44. It lists Kichha railway station at 3 km and Rudrapur City at 18 km. The NICDC page says the cluster is intended to extend the existing industrial ecosystem at Pantnagar.

An environmental clearance form for the project gives a total area of 1,013.386 acres, with the focus on an automobile and engineering cluster and a mixed-development layout. It states that power will come from the Uttarakhand state grid and that water bodies and hospitals lie within a few kilometres.

What changes and what does not

The summit remarks do not change the project's legal or funding status. The cluster was already in development under NICDC before the speech. What the speech does is put the project on record as a priority for state industrial policy, and it signals that the state wants investors and MSMEs to look at the Tarai region.

Earlier, a 2024 news report of a Rs 400 crore central contribution for Khurpiya quoted the state industries secretary, who gave a figure of 1,200 acres. That figure differs from the 1,002 acres used by NICDC and the CM, so the NICDC figure is used here.

What is next

The next verifiable milestones are construction progress against the December 2028 trunk infrastructure target, and any later notifications or allotments of plots to industrial units. None had been published at the time of this report.