Rajpura-Patiala Industrial Smart City: Land Acquisition Status

Acquisition model: purchase first, Cabinet approval later

Unlike several other National Industrial Corridor Development Programme (NICDP) nodes where land acquisition follows Cabinet approval, the Rajpura-Patiala site was different. The land was earlier purchased in 2020 during the Congress government in the state for setting up an integrated manufacturing cluster. This meant that by the time the Union Cabinet acted, the site was already in hand.

The land acquisition followed the Right To Fair Compensation & Transparency In Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation & Resettlement Act 2013, with a team of social scientists, rehabilitation experts, and technical specialists reviewing the Social Impact Assessment and concluding that the project's public benefits outweigh its social costs. Some of the ground was also panchayat and government land rather than only privately held farmland, which shaped how compensation was distributed (see below).

Central Cabinet sign-off followed in August 2024: Punjab received a booster dose from the Centre with a Cabinet meeting, chaired by PM Modi, approving Rajpura as one of the 12 sites for smart industrial city projects. By that point, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said 1,099 acres of land had been acquired and fenced.

Compensation rates reported

Specific per-acre figures for this cluster surfaced during a 2021 dispute over how compensation was distributed on the site (then referred to locally as the Modern Industrial Park / Integrated Manufacturing Cluster land, spread over more than 1,100 acres). According to the sub-divisional magistrate handling the case: as per the government directions, the village panchayat gets Rs 25 lakh, while the tiller gets Rs 9 lakh per acre. These rates applied specifically to land classified as panchayat/government land being tilled by farmers, not to standard privately-owned agricultural plots acquired under a market-linked award.

No updated, project-wide per-acre compensation schedule for the finalised 1,099-acre IMC footprint has been published in available reporting beyond this figure. Where later figures are not available, they are omitted here rather than estimated.

Villages covered

Public reporting on this project names villages in two separate but related contexts: the core cluster site, and access-road land connecting the cluster to the wider road network.

• Land compensation dispute (2021): In Aakrhi village, a panchayat member was allotted Rs 51 lakh compensation despite the fact that he neither owns land nor has any girdawari in his name — one of several claims raised by residents of Aakrhi and other affected villages.
• 150-ft connector road to SAS Nagar airport: The latest milestone in this endeavour is the completion of land acquisition in villages Kai, Mandwal, Khanpur Khurd, Kanwarpur, and Pabra for the construction of a 150-foot wide road linking the IMC to the airport corridor.

Available reporting does not give a consolidated, official village-by-village or district-by-district count for the full 1,099-acre core site; all villages named above fall within Rajpura tehsil, Patiala district.

Budget allocated

The entire plan under the National Industrial Corridor Development Programme will be worth Rs 28,602 crore, with Rajpura industrial city alone approved at a cost of Rs 1,367 crore. The site holds an investment potential of ₹7,500 crore and is expected to generate over 64,000 jobs, with a project cost of ₹1,367 crore for trunk infrastructure. The project is run as a joint venture between the Center and Punjab government, sharing a 50:50 partnership with a dedicated Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to implement everything.

A separate infrastructure package is now listed on the India Investment Grid: Common Infrastructure for Industrial Parks in Punjab, running 01-Apr-2026 to 11-Apr-2029, with a Total Project Cost of USD 171.98 million — this is the near-term execution tranche for site infrastructure rather than the full ₹1,367 crore headline figure.

Disputes and farmer grievances

The clearest documented dispute concerns how compensation on government/panchayat land was distributed, not the acquisition of privately owned farmland itself. Residents of three villages, particularly Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class tillers, alleged corruption in compensation being transferred to politically connected individuals instead of actual tillers, prompting the administration to order a probe into land compensation transferred for the Modern Industrial Park and Integrated Manufacturing Cluster spread over more than 1,100 acres on government and panchayat land in Rajpura.

Separately, a related but distinct piece of Rajpura industrial land history resurfaced in 2025: a 1993-era, 1,000-acre acquisition tied to a different company (SIEL Ltd) became the subject of a High Court status-quo order. The Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered status quo regarding construction, possession and alienation of over 469 acres after original landowners alleged a fraudulent sale of 469.37 acres for a total sale consideration over Rs 117 crore, out of land originally acquired for industrial development under a 1993 MoU. This case relates to an older, separate Rajpura land parcel and is not part of the current 1,099-acre NICDC IMC site, but it illustrates the town's history of contested industrial land deals.

Broader context: the Centre's approval of the project came at a time when farmer unions were protesting at Shambhu border, barely 15 km from Rajpura, and local industry voices such as the Micro, Small, and Medium Industry Welfare Association president, who said the existing Focal Point in Rajpura is in a dilapidated condition, with roads full of potholes, causing industries to leave the town, pressed the government to fix existing industrial infrastructure alongside the new project.

Current stage

As of mid-2026, land acquisition for the core 1,099-acre site is complete and the plot is fenced: around 1,099 acres of land has been acquired and fenced for the project in Rajpura, with focus areas comprising electronics system design, food and beverages, fabricated metal and chemicals, textiles, fabrics and apparels.

Environmental clearance has also been secured: SEIAA, Punjab has granted Environmental Clearance for Rajpura-Patiala Integrated Manufacturing Cluster (IMC), a flagship project under the Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor (AKIC), being developed as part of National Industrial Corridor Development Programme (NICDP).

Trunk and common infrastructure works are now entering an execution window, with the India Investment Grid listing a Common Infrastructure for Industrial Parks package running from April 2026 to April 2029. NICDC's chairman had earlier indicated urgency on execution: the chairman of National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation said he had visited Punjab to assess the situation, found everything in place, and said work would start within three months. Plot allotment to industrial investors and construction of internal infrastructure are the next visible milestones to track.