Mountain City Jubbarhatti Township: Real-Estate and Investment Outlook

What can and cannot legally be bought right now

At this stage there is no open-market plot or flat inventory in Mountain City for the public to buy. The site is still being assembled by the government: HIMUDA's board approved acquiring land for the township in October 2023, and a Town and Country Planning Department notification later confirmed HIMUDA has already acquired 35 hectares land and 100 hectares more is being acquired. Until HIMUDA formally notifies a scheme (application form, price list, Demand Survey), individuals cannot buy specific plots inside the footprint on the open market.

Underlying agricultural land in Himachal Pradesh is separately restricted by Section 118 of the HP Tenancy and Land Reforms Act, 1972, which does not put an absolute ban on the sale and purchase of land and property in Himachal, but restricts the transfer of land to a person who is not an agriculturalist of the state, including even the non-agriculturalists of the state. A specific carve-out exists for government housing bodies: the Act exempts a non-agriculturist who purchases or intends to purchase land for the construction of a house or shop, or purchases a built up house or shop, from the Himachal Pradesh Housing and Urban Development Authority. In practice this means once HIMUDA itself sells developed plots or flats in Mountain City, buyers — including non-Himachalis — can acquire them without Section 118 permission, but they cannot presently buy raw village land inside the notified project boundary from private owners without going through the standard state-permission process.

A separate, broader relaxation — allowing non-Himachali buyers to purchase residential property in RERA-registered private developer colonies without Section 118 permission — is currently under consideration; no official notification has been issued till now. This proposal, even if notified, would not by itself create a market in Mountain City land, since that land is being assembled by HIMUDA, not private developers.

How land and plots are expected to be released

The project has moved in stages rather than as a single launch. In October 2023, HIMUDA's board received the green light from its Board of Directors to acquire land for the establishment of new township 'Mountain City', near the Jubbarhatti airport, as a counter-magnet city to decongest Shimla city, at an estimated cost of around Rs 1,373 crore. Separately, the PWD Minister stated that around 2,600 bighas were required for the project and land was being acquired, with Rs 1,300 crore to be spent.

To give the township a formal planning footprint, the TCP Department created the Jathia Devi Planning Area by excluding 177 villages from the Shimla Planning Area, noting that HIMUDA proposes to set up a mountain township at Jathia Devi to function as a satellite township to the state capital, and has already acquired 35 hectares land with 100 hectares more being acquired. The most recent concrete figure available is from a February 2026 HIMUDA board update, where the Town and Country Planning Minister said that in the first phase of the Jathia Devi project near Shimla, HIMUDA will develop 919 residential units on 21 bighas of land with an estimated investment of Rs 1,327 crore. This first phase — 21 bighas — is a small fraction of the roughly 2,600 bighas cited as the eventual land requirement, indicating the bulk of assembly and release is still ahead.

Comparable precedent: what actually happened at this same site before

The clearest documented precedent for Mountain City is its own earlier incarnation. The state government had signed an MoU with Singapore on February 27, 2017, for constructing a modern township at Jathiadevi, near Jubbarhatti airport. That version collapsed: the project never took off as the NGT restricted construction to two and a half floors, which made the project economically unviable, and the memorandum of understanding was scrapped in August 2019. HIMUDA's own chief executive at the time explained the pivot: since the Singapore government backed out of the project after the NGT imposed the restrictions, HIMUDA decided to sell plots and construct flats at the site. That is essentially the same model — direct HIMUDA plot/flat sale rather than a foreign joint venture — that has been revived under the "Mountain City" name since 2023.

HIMUDA has simultaneously announced other counter-magnet/satellite townships elsewhere in the state, which give a sense of how many such projects are moving through the same pipeline at once: the board approved the proposed Him-Chandigarh Township at Sheetalpur in Baddi, planned near the Baddi industrial belt and projected as a strategically located urban centre close to the Chandigarh region, and also granted approval to initiate preliminary activities for a new township at Morni Hills in Pachhad and another planned development township at Lunj. No independently verified before/after price-appreciation figures for any of these newly announced HIMUDA townships — including Mountain City/Jathia Devi — were found in current research. Any claims of plot-price appreciation being circulated by brokers or portals for this specific project should be treated as unverified until HIMUDA publishes actual allotment rates.

Key risks

• Title/tenure risk: Land inside the notified footprint is a mix of village revenue land under acquisition and forest/hill terrain; Section 118 restrictions on agricultural land transfer continue to apply to any private transaction outside a direct HIMUDA sale.
• Regulatory/environmental risk: The site's own history shows a court-driven rule can invalidate years of planning — the NGT's restriction of construction to two and a half floors made the original project economically unviable and led to the international partner withdrawing.
• Notification/boundary changes: The project's planning geography has already been redrawn once, with 177 villages excluded from the Shimla Planning Area to form the new Jathia Devi Planning Area — future boundary or zoning notifications could again alter which villages, and which land parcels, fall inside the township.
• Timeline slippage: From the original 2017 MoU to the 2019 collapse, the 2023 revival, and a first firm phase-1 figure only surfacing in February 2026, the project has taken close to a decade to produce a concrete, small-scale (21-bigha) first phase against an eventual land target of roughly 2,600 bighas.
• Policy risk on buyer eligibility: A wider relaxation letting non-Himachalis buy from private RERA developers without Section 118 permission is under consideration but not yet notified, so the rules governing who can buy what, and how, in the broader Shimla periphery market could still change.

Signals to watch

• Formal completion of land acquisition beyond the reported 35 hectares, and any updated TCP notification finalising the Jathia Devi Planning Area boundaries.
• An official HIMUDA Demand Survey or allotment advertisement for the 919-unit, 21-bigha Phase 1 — including plot/flat sizes, price per unit, and earnest-money terms, in the format HIMUDA has historically used for its self-financing schemes.
• RERA registration of Phase 1 once construction begins, which would allow independent verification of unit counts, timelines and pricing.
• Whether the state government notifies the proposed Section 118 relaxation for non-Himachali buyers in RERA-registered colonies, which is currently only under consideration.
• Relative progress of sister HIMUDA townships (Him-Chandigarh at Baddi, Morni Hills, Lunj) announced in the same board meetings, as a benchmark for whether Mountain City is keeping pace or falling behind.
• Any board decision on the special reservation quota for Olympic/Asian Games medalists, Gallantry Award winners and Children's Bravery Award recipients, since this is a documented allotment-policy change that will affect available inventory.