LDA IT City (Sultanpur Road / CG City): Real Estate and Investment Outlook

What Can Legally Be Bought Now — and What Can't

At the current stage there is no open, general-public sale of plots inside LDA IT City. The only allotment completed so far is a farmer/landowner lottery. In the Phase 1 lottery on March 10, 2026, LDA allotted 549 developed residential plots across Sectors 15, 16, 17, 18, and 30 of the IT City to eligible farmers who had completed their land pooling agreements. IT City Phase 1 lottery is complete — 549 plots allotted to farmer participants. The general public lottery has not been announced yet.

Buying raw village land directly from a private seller inside the notified footprint carries specific legal restriction. The 11 villages — Rakibabad, Sonai, Kajehra, Bhatwara, Moharikhurd, Sikandarpur Amolia, Bakkas, Pahadnagar Tikaria, Siddhpura, Parheta, and Khujaili — are all in the Mohanlalganj tehsil of Lucknow, and private land transactions in 10 of these villages are currently restricted by the UP government. Within the notified Phase 1 area specifically, the LDA has banned the buying and selling of land in the Phase-1 area (686.66 hectares) of the IT City project.

Despite this, plots are already being advertised in the market under the "IT City" name. One property-advisory source flags this directly: "Anyone selling 'IT City plots' in the market right now may be offering unverified land — always verify before paying anything." The same caution applies to Wellness City, the adjoining LDA township, where plots will be allotted through LDA's transparent computerised lottery system — the same process used for IT City in March 2026 — but registration dates have not been announced.

How Land and Plots Are Expected to Be Released

The scheme runs on a land-pooling model rather than conventional compulsory acquisition. The project is developed under the land pooling system, under which landowners who contribute their land receive 25% of the developed plots in return instead of traditional monetary compensation.

Reported figures for the overall size of the scheme are inconsistent across time and source. Early coverage described a much smaller footprint: in 2013 the Uttar Pradesh government decided to develop an IT city, IT institute, medicity, administrative training institute and dairy plant on 846.49 acres of Chak Gajaria farm land, with 100 acres transferred to the IT and Electronics department for IT city itself. Later reporting scaled this up substantially — some sources cite approximately 2,660 acres, employing a land pooling model, compensating original landowners with 25% of redeveloped plots, while a 2026 buyer guide instead describes a total LDA IT City scheme covering approximately 3,490 acres (≈5,625 bigha) along Sultanpur Road, and yet another 2026 source puts LDA IT City at 1,696 acres, distinct from the separate 1,474-acre LDA Wellness City. This spread of figures suggests the master layout has been redrawn more than once and is not yet fixed.

The anchor investment is a dedicated technology cluster: a dedicated IT/ITeS technology cluster of 100 acres (≈161 bigha) — a ₹1,500 crore investment being developed as a Public-Private Partnership with HCL Technologies. The rollout has already seen delay and course correction. A tender was floated in early 2025: the LDA issued a tender for development of the IT City, with interested developers given a submission deadline of March 5, 2025, and officials said development work on the IT City will commence in April along Sultanpur Road. Separately, a key tender for IT/AI City development was cancelled in late 2024 due to insufficient minimum bids, and the LDA terminated a contract with a Gujarat-based agency in October 2025 to prepare layouts in-house, after prior inefficiencies in external coordination.

The only concrete allotment to date is the farmer lottery: Phase 1 plots were offered in six sizes — 35 sqm (377 sq ft) up to 288 sqm (3,100 sq ft) — in Sectors 15, 16, 17, 18, and 30, and the lottery was conducted with applicants drawing their own lot slips on stage, live-streamed in full. Unofficial pricing places LDA's own reference rate for the corridor at ₹2,200–₹3,000 per sq ft, below private market rates because LDA is the developer rather than a margin-seeking builder, while private RERA-registered projects in the same belt sit at ₹3,500–₹5,000 per sq ft, about 1.4×–1.7× of LDA — though this pricing is described as an estimate, not a confirmed official notification.

Comparable Precedent: What Happened to Values Elsewhere

Two documented precedents exist on the same general Sultanpur Road / Amar Shaheed Path corridor and give a sense of how values have moved once earlier LDA-area townships matured.

Sushant Golf City (Ansal API, Amar Shaheed Path) — a comparable large private township on the same corridor axis, now well past its launch phase — shows the following documented movement: flat rates in Sushant Golf City changed by 17.8% in the last 1 year, 50.5% in the last 3 years, 100.0% in the last 5 years and 123.5% in the last 10 years, while land rates changed by 35.1% in the last 1 year, 78.9% in the last 3 years, 164.9% in the last 5 years and 277.8% in the last 10 years. As of early-to-mid 2026, average land rates in Sushant Golf City stood around ₹10,200 per sq ft.

Official circle-rate revision (August 2025) — this is a government-notified, not market-estimated, data point covering the wider Gomti Nagar corridor that IT City is meant to extend: Gomtinagar (Viraj Khand, Vibhuti Khand) circle rates increased from ₹33,000 to ₹77,000 per sq m, making it Lucknow's most expensive area after the citywide revision.

Institutional demand inside CG City itself has already been tested through auctions, ahead of any residential release: Lucknow Metro auctioned its 86 acres (≈138 bigha) of plotted land within CG City in a hugely successful event — the first major signal of institutional investor confidence in the Sultanpur Road corridor. LDA's first major commercial auction inside CG City raised ₹425 crore, and in a second round, key bids included CP-04 at ₹180 crore, School Plot F-3 at ₹119 crore, and Mix-Use Plot F-1 at ₹102 crore. These figures are for commercial/CBD land, not residential plots, and predate any general residential sale.

None of this is a guarantee for IT City residential plots specifically — Sushant Golf City and the Gomti Nagar corridor are mature, fully notified markets with years of resale transaction history; IT City's own public secondary market does not yet exist.

Key Risks

• Title and transaction risk: private land transactions in 10 of the 11 IT City villages are currently restricted by the UP government, and the LDA has banned buying and selling of land across the entire 686.66-hectare Phase 1 area. Land bought informally inside this footprint may not be legally transferable until pooling/acquisition is resolved.
• Unverified resale listings: brokers are already advertising "IT City plots" despite the general public lottery not having been announced yet; one advisory source explicitly warns buyers to verify before paying anything, since such listings may not correspond to a real allotment.
• Tender and contractor churn: a 2024 tender for IT/AI City development was cancelled for insufficient bids, and LDA terminated a Gujarat-based agency's layout contract in October 2025, moving layout preparation in-house — a sign of repeated administrative delay on the same project.
• Timeline slippage against public statements: officials said in February 2025 that development work would commence in April 2025, yet the first concrete allotment (a farmer-only lottery, not a public sale) only occurred on March 10, 2026 — roughly a year later than the stated start.
• Inconsistent official scope: the total project area has been reported as 846.49 acres (2013), ~2,660 acres, ~3,490 acres, and separately 1,696 acres across different sources and dates, indicating the master plan boundaries have not settled into one confirmed figure.
• Unconfirmed pricing and RERA status: the widely quoted ₹2,200–₹3,000/sq ft LDA reference rate is described by market sources as an estimate rather than an official notified rate, and no project-specific RERA registration number for IT City plots was found in available sources, unlike other LDA schemes such as Anant Nagar, which carry specific UPRERAPRJ numbers.

Signals to Watch

• Announcement of a general-public registration/lottery window for IT City plots on ldalucknow.in or registration.ldalucknow.in — as of mid-2026 this had not yet opened, with buyers advised to regularly check the official LDA portals.
• Progress on the HCL Technologies PPP tender and the 100-acre IT/ITeS anchor cluster, given the prior cancelled tender and contractor termination.
• Finalisation and publication of a stable sector-wise layout map now that LDA is preparing layouts in-house after ending its external agency contract.
• Appearance of a project-specific RERA number for IT City sectors, similar to the individual khand-wise numbers already issued for other LDA schemes like Anant Nagar.
• Formal circle-rate notification specific to the 11 IT City villages, which would replace the current unofficial per-sq-ft estimates with a government-fixed base value.
• Parallel progress at the adjacent, similarly land-pooled LDA Wellness City (1,474 acres) on the same Sultanpur Road corridor, since both townships share the same acquisition model and timeline risk.