LDA Issues Tender for IT City Development on Sultanpur Road — 360-Acre Scope, March 2025 Deadline

What Was Decided

On February 18, 2025, the Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) issued a tender inviting developers to bid for construction work on the long-pending IT City project along Sultanpur Road. The Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) recently issued a tender for the development of the IT City in Uttar Pradesh's capital city. The decision was made public by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's adviser, Awanish K. Awasthi, on X (formerly Twitter). The Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) recently issued a tender for the development of the IT City in Uttar Pradesh's capital city. Interested developers have a submission deadline of March 5, 2025. The development was confirmed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's adviser Awanish K Awasthi on X.

In his post, Awasthi wrote: "The dream of an IT City in #Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, is set to become a reality soon. Development work on the IT City will commence in April along #SultanpurRoad. The Lucknow Development Authority has issued a tender, with a submission deadline of March 5." The tender was also posted on the official LDA website.

Operative Details: Area, Model, Status

Awasthi stated that the IT City spans across 360 acres and aims to attract significant investments from major firms across the country. The project is structured as a Public-Private Partnership: the IT City in Lucknow is being built on a PPP model by the UP government and HCL Technologies.

The project carries Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status, which comes with tax incentives, and on completion the government has projected 25,000 direct and 50,000 indirect jobs, per the editorial brief supplied for this record. The scheme is explicitly positioned within a wider township: the project is a part of the larger CG City (Chak Gajaria) development.

It is worth noting that the 360-acre figure applies to the specific tender package announced on this date, not to the full township footprint. Coverage of the broader CG City / IT City scheme over 2024–2026 has cited a range of area figures at different stages — including an October 2024 Expression-of-Interest tender described by one social media tracker as a mega 1,582-acre IT City project for selection of a co-developer for development, marketing and sales of properties, later real-estate guides describing the full township as 1,696 acres, and 2026 buyer guides citing figures as high as roughly 3,490 acres for the combined Sultanpur Road corridor scheme. These larger numbers describe the evolving master-plan footprint, not the February 2025 tender itself.

Land and Boundaries Affected

Alongside the tender, the state government froze land transactions in the affected village belt. The government has put a stop on the sale and purchase of land in villages located on the Sultanpur road. Land is being acquired in villages of the Mohanlalganj district such as Rakibabad, Sonai, Kajehra, Bhatwara, Moharikhurd, Sikandarpur Amolia, Bakkas, Pahadnagar Tikaria, Siddhpura, Parheta, and Khujaili, according to media reports. This freeze was intended to prevent speculative land deals from disrupting the assembly of parcels needed for the notified project boundary.

Practical Effect and What Happened Next

The February 2025 tender followed an earlier Expression of Interest process. Reporting on the project's history notes that prior to tender issuance, an Expression of Interest (EOI) was floated on December 30, 2024, targeting developers for infrastructure such as IT parks, residential zones, and commercial spaces spanning approximately 500 acres.

Construction did not begin exactly on the promised April 2025 timeline. Later tracking of the project states that while initial plans targeted construction commencement in April 2025 following bidder documentation and contract awards, key infrastructure such as the grid road system began construction in July 2025. Separately, execution hit an administrative snag later in the year: the Lucknow Development Authority's termination of a contract with a Gujarat-based agency in October 2025 to prepare layouts in-house was aimed at avoiding further delays.

Land assembly for the township proceeded on a land-pooling basis rather than pure acquisition. Under this model, farmers who contribute land are compensated with a share of developed plots rather than a one-time cash payment, and subsequent lotteries allotted plots to participating landowners: a Phase 1 lottery in March 2026 and a second-phase lottery on May 22, 2026, at which the second-phase lottery for plot allotment under the IT City Scheme was conducted on May 22, 2026, with a total of 415 plots allotted to farmers who participated in the Land Pooling Scheme, held at the Pluto Auditorium of Indira Gandhi Pratishthan, Lucknow.

For investors and residents on Sultanpur Road, the practical effect of the February 2025 tender was to formally launch the construction phase of a project that had been announced and re-announced for years, while also triggering an immediate freeze on informal land dealing in the affected villages pending the authority's own acquisition and pooling process.

Note on Conflicting Figures

Public statements and subsequent reporting on the IT City / CG City scheme have used different area figures at different times — 100 acres for the core HCL IT/ITeS cluster, 360 acres for the February 2025 tender package, roughly 800 acres for the original CG City plan, and figures ranging from about 1,582 acres to over 3,000 acres in later master-plan and real-estate coverage as the scheme expanded to include Wellness City and other adjoining LDA schemes on the same corridor. Readers should treat the 360-acre figure as specific to the tender covered in this record, dated February 18, 2025, and treat larger acreage claims as referring to the wider, later-expanded township footprint reported at other points in the project's timeline.