For nearly two decades, the story of urban expansion around Mohali and New Chandigarh has followed a predictable script. GMADA notifies a village’s farmland for acquisition, builders and planners move in, gleaming sectors rise around the boundary, and the village itself — the houses, the lanes, the handful of streets locals call home — gets left behind. No new sewerage line. No proper road. No drainage. A village can sit inside a township worth thousands of crores and still flood every monsoon.

That pattern is what the Punjab government says it is now breaking. In a decision reported by The Tribune in late June 2026, the state announced that villages surrendering agricultural land for the ongoing 11,103-acre Greater Mohali and New Chandigarh expansion will be developed at the same time as the townships being built around them — not afterward. There’s a fixed deadline attached: three years from the date GMADA takes physical possession of a village’s land.

If you own land in this corridor, are planning to buy a flat or plot anywhere between Mohali, Kharar, Banur and New Chandigarh, or are simply trying to understand why prices keep climbing in this part of Punjab, this decision is worth understanding properly.

Quick Summary

• Punjab has decided, in principle, that villages giving up land for GMADA’s Greater Mohali and New Chandigarh expansion will get their own infrastructure — roads, sewerage, water supply, drainage — developed in parallel with the new townships, not after.
• A binding three-year deadline now applies: all development work tied to a village must be completed within three years of GMADA taking possession of the acquired land.
• Houses along a village’s traditional boundary road (the phirni) are fully exempt from acquisition. Houses standing in fields beyond the phirni will be relocated, with GMADA managing the process.
• The decision follows a three-week Pucca Morcha protest by farmers outside GMADA’s Sector 62 headquarters, layered on top of an already-revised Land Pooling Policy that increased plot entitlements in April 2026.
• This sits within a much larger 11,103-acre acquisition drive covering Aerotropolis, Eco City-3, Eco City-4, and new residential townships in New Chandigarh.

What Has the Punjab Government Actually Announced?

It helps to be precise here, because policy announcements in this space tend to get inflated in re-reporting. What the government has confirmed, through an in-principle decision taken at a high-level meeting and reported by The Tribune on June 24, 2026, is this: villages whose agricultural land is acquired under the ongoing Greater Mohali / New Chandigarh expansion will have their own settlement infrastructure upgraded and integrated with GMADA’s systems, on a fixed three-year timeline, as a condition attached to the acquisition process.

Three Specific Commitments

• Utility integration — Village sewerage, water supply networks and drainage will be physically connected to GMADA’s own infrastructure grid, the same systems serving the new sectors, rather than left on separate, ageing village arrangements.
• Guaranteed road funding — GMADA has committed to providing gap funding so that no village road project stalls for lack of money, with multiple government departments jointly responsible for execution.
• Phirni exemption — Houses standing along the phirni, the customary boundary road that has marked the physical edge of a Punjabi village for generations, are fully exempt from land acquisition. Houses outside the phirni but within the planning area will instead be relocated, with GMADA taking responsibility.

Why Is Greater Mohali Expanding in the First Place?

Greater Mohali — broadly the SAS Nagar district stretching from Mohali city through Kharar, Banur, Zirakpur and Derabassi, up to New Chandigarh and Mullanpur — has been the fastest-growing urban corridor in Punjab for over a decade. Chandigarh itself is a fixed, planned city with essentially no room left to expand. Every overflow of population, business and capital that Chandigarh can’t absorb has gone into this belt instead.

GMADA’s response has been a series of large, named townships: Aerocity, IT City, Eco City (in its first and second phases), and now the much larger Aerotropolis — a 5,500-acre, nine-pocket township built around Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport. Eco City-3 (roughly 717 acres) and the newly notified Eco City-4 (526 acres across four villages in Kharar tehsil) extend this further into New Chandigarh. Altogether, the current acquisition drive covers 11,103 acres.

All of this land has one thing in common: it used to be — and in many cases still is, until possession is formally taken — agricultural land belonging to villages that have farmed it for generations. The expansion is happening because Punjab needs more planned urban land near Chandigarh and the airport, and the only way to get it is by acquiring it from existing villages.

What Role Does GMADA Play in All This?

GMADA — the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority — is the statutory body that does almost everything in this story. Constituted in 2006 under the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995, GMADA is responsible for development and redevelopment across Mohali, Banur, Zirakpur, Derabassi, Kharar, Mullanpur, Fatehgarh Sahib, Mandi Gobindgarh and Rupnagar.

In practice, GMADA does four things in any expansion like this: it notifies and acquires land, it prepares master plans and lays out sectors, it builds primary infrastructure (roads, sewerage trunk lines, water supply), and it allots developed plots — either to the open market or, under the Land Pooling Policy, back to the farmers who gave up their land in the first place.

The village-development commitment effectively adds a fifth function GMADA has not historically performed at scale: extending and maintaining infrastructure inside existing village settlements, not just around them. This is the part that is genuinely new. Read more about how GMADA’s broader projects are shaping the corridor in our GMADA Properties Mohali 2026 guide.

Villages Expected to Benefit

The commitment applies broadly to villages within the 11,103-acre acquisition footprint, spanning multiple GMADA projects. Based on official notifications and reporting through mid-2026, the villages most directly affected include:

• Aerotropolis-area villages in SAS Nagar tehsil, across Pockets A through J of the 5,500-acre township, including villages around the early-phase Pockets A–D and those now under acquisition for Pockets E onward.
• Eco City-3 villages in New Chandigarh: Hoshiyarpur, Rasulpur, Takipur, Dhode Majra, Majra, Salamatpur, Kansala, Rajgarh and Kartarpur — nine villages covering roughly 717 acres, where compensation awards were announced in December 2025.
• Eco City-4 villages in Majri sub-tehsil, Kharar tehsil: Kartarpur, Kansala, Rajgarh and Boothgarh, covering 526 acres notified in June 2026. Three of these villages overlap with Eco City-3.
• Villages under the 309-acre low/high-density residential township in New Chandigarh.
• Additional villages named in ongoing Section 4 and Section 5 notifications, such as Nadiayali and Banur (Tehsil Banur), where public hearings were held through May 2026.

Infrastructure Planned: Roads, Water, Sewerage, Drainage

Road Development

Village roads are to be funded and constructed with GMADA acting as financial backstop — providing gap funding wherever a project would otherwise stall — while execution responsibility is shared across departments. This is distinct from the major arterial road network already planned for these townships: 60-metre wide arterial roads, 45-metre collector roads and 30-metre primary roads under GMADA’s New Chandigarh development plan, plus large projects like the 200-foot road connecting Aerocity/Airport Road to the Kharar-Banur road (PR-9).

Water Supply & Sewerage

The commitment is to integrate village water supply and sewerage directly with GMADA’s own trunk systems — the same infrastructure being laid for the new sectors — rather than maintaining two parallel, unequal systems side by side. This addresses the oldest and most legitimate farmer grievance in this story: villages giving up land for urban development while remaining without basic civic services themselves.

Drainage

Drainage integration follows the same logic. Villages sitting inside or adjacent to new sectors have historically suffered worse flooding precisely because their land was absorbed into the urban grid without matching stormwater infrastructure.

Public Utilities & the Phirni Exemption

Beyond utilities, the phirni exemption is itself an infrastructure-adjacent protection — by keeping the village’s boundary road and the houses along it outside the acquisition footprint, the government preserves the physical core of the settlement while urbanisation proceeds around it rather than through it.

How This Impacts Property Prices

Will Land Prices Increase?

They already have, sharply. Pre-notification agricultural land values in the GMADA belt stood at roughly ₹5 crore per acre. After acquisition notifications were issued, market values rose to approximately ₹8 crore per acre — land confirmed to be absorbed into a planned township commands a premium even before infrastructure exists. Compensation awards already declared — for Eco City-3, the New Chandigarh township, and Aerotropolis Blocks A–D — have been pegged above ₹19 crore per acre, and combined developed-plot value under the Land Pooling Policy is estimated at around ₹16 crore per acre.

The village-development commitment adds a further layer: land and plots near villages with a guaranteed three-year infrastructure timeline are likely to be seen as lower-risk, because the historic pattern — sectors built while neighbouring villages stayed unserviced — depressed values at those exact boundary zones.

Will Apartment Prices Rise?

Indirectly, yes — though the mechanism is about confidence more than direct cause and effect. Apartment pricing in Mohali’s established corridors (IT City, Aerocity, Sector 82) responds primarily to employment growth and connectivity, not to land acquisition news in adjoining villages. But sustained, well-executed infrastructure expansion strengthens the overall growth narrative supporting apartment demand citywide, and reduces the “infrastructure that never arrives” discount buyers often price into under-construction Mohali projects.

Will Commercial Property Benefit?

This is where the effect is most direct. Aerotropolis and Eco City commercial plots depend heavily on the surrounding population actually moving in and staying, which in turn depends on civic infrastructure functioning from day one. A village development guarantee that keeps water, sewerage and roads working at the boundary of new commercial zones directly supports footfall and occupancy for businesses operating there.

Property Price Impact Table

Figures sourced from Tribune reporting and Mohali Aerotropolis dealer-network data current to June 2026. Secondary-market LOI prices fluctuate — verify independently before any transaction.

What Should Existing Homeowners Know?

If you already own property — a house, a flat, or agricultural land — anywhere in this corridor, three things matter immediately.

• Check whether your specific village or land parcel has actually been notified under Section 4 or Section 5 — general news does not mean every plot in the district is affected
• If your house sits along the phirni, confirm exemption status against the specific notification for your village, not general reporting
• If you already own a flat/plot in an established township (Aerocity, IT City, earlier Eco City phases), this announcement doesn’t change your title — its relevance is about the broader growth trajectory of the corridor

Impact on Farmers, Landowners, Builders & NRIs

Impact on Farmers

For farmers surrendering land, the village-development commitment sits on top of an already significantly revised compensation framework. As of the April 2026 enhancement, the residential plot entitlement under the mixed-use category rose from 1,600 to 1,630 square yards per acre, and the commercial SCO entitlement rose from 200 to 210 square yards per acre, for holdings of one acre or more. Under the oustee category, farmers with smaller holdings receive fixed plot sizes of 200, 300 or 500 square yards depending on holding size, allotted at scheme price. All plots, including previously reserved preferential-location plots, now go into a single draw of lots.

The Sahuliyat Certificate — granting stamp duty exemption when reinvesting compensation in alternative Punjab land — has had its validity extended from two years to four, alongside the linked window for priority tubewell connections.

Impact on Landowners

For landowners whose land hasn’t yet been notified, compensation and plot-entitlement frameworks have moved consistently upward — three revisions in roughly a year. That trend, plus the new development guarantee, materially changes the calculus around resisting versus negotiating when a notification eventually arrives. Engaging early with GMADA’s land-owner cell and verifying entitlements against the current policy version remains essential.

Impact on Builders

Builders operating near these villages benefit from a lower long-term infrastructure risk profile — civic services at the township-village boundary are less likely to remain unfinished, historically a source of project delays. Builders should still expect continued acquisition activity and occasional protest-driven disruption to remain part of the operating environment for the next several years.

Impact on NRIs

NRI buyers eyeing Aerotropolis LOIs, Eco City plots, or flats in the wider Mohali corridor should read this as a risk-reduction signal rather than a price-appreciation trigger in itself. A credible, time-bound commitment to fix the village-infrastructure gap reduces one of the specific concerns NRI buyers raise most often: that government-led townships in Punjab have a poor track record of finishing what they start on schedule. See our NRI Property Investment Guide for the full buying process.

Investment Opportunities & Risks

The clearest opportunity sits in GMADA’s own Land Pooling and direct-allotment products — Aerotropolis pockets currently in early-phase acquisition (Pockets E onward), and any future Eco City tranches — via fresh allotment where eligible or the secondary LOI market for already-notified pockets. Developed-plot value under the current framework is estimated at roughly double the post-notification land price and three times the pre-notification price, though this value is only realised once GMADA actually delivers possession and registry — precisely what this village-development commitment and three-year deadline are meant to make more reliable.

This is not risk-free. Land acquisition in Punjab has a documented history of stalling, reversing and being challenged in court — the original June 2025 Land Pooling Policy was withdrawn entirely within two months after a High Court stay and mass protests. Pocket A of Aerotropolis carries an active 927-acre court dispute, and LOIs there cannot currently be registered. Eco City-3, first conceptualised in 2016, was halted in 2020 due to budget constraints, restarting only in 2022.

Benefits vs Risks

Investor Checklist

• Confirm the specific pocket/village is not under active court dispute
• Verify LOI authenticity directly at the GMADA office before transacting
• Check grid road and trunk infrastructure progress for the specific pocket
• Budget for transfer fee, stamp duty and registration on secondary LOI purchases
• Treat this as a medium-to-long-term capital appreciation play, not a quick flip

Buyer Checklist (Ready/Resale Property)

• Confirm RERA registration of any project on the Punjab RERA portal
• Check proximity to villages under acquisition and their infrastructure status
• Verify clear title and chain of ownership before booking resale
• Get an independent market valuation before finalising price

NRI Checklist

• Confirm eligibility under FEMA — residential/commercial yes, agricultural land no
• Set up NRE/NRO account routing for payment before initiating any purchase
• Arrange Power of Attorney if you cannot be present for registry
• Factor in 1% TDS on transactions above ₹50 lakh

Infrastructure Timeline

• June 2025Punjab notifies original Land Pooling Policy-2025 proposing compulsory pooling of 65,533 acres statewide; triggers immediate protests.
• August 2025Policy withdrawn entirely after High Court interim stay and political pressure.
• November 2025Revised, optional Land Pooling Policy introduced for the 11,103-acre Greater Mohali/New Chandigarh drive.
• December 2025Eco City-3 compensation award announced — ₹3,690 crore across 716 acres, nine villages.
• March 30, 2026Compensation award for 309-acre New Chandigarh township, pegged above ₹19 crore/acre.
• April 2026Enhanced land pooling package: bigger plots, oustee quota, free conveyance deeds, four-year Sahuliyat Certificate validity.
• June 2, 2026Eco City-4 Section 4(1) notification issued for 526 acres across four villages in Kharar tehsil.
• Mid-June 2026Three-week Pucca Morcha protest at GMADA HQ, Sector 62, ends after government agrees to further concessions.
• June 24, 2026Punjab announces in-principle decision to develop villages simultaneously with townships, with three-year deadline.
• Expected 2027–2028Possession targeted for Phase 1 of several Aerotropolis pockets.

Frequently Asked Questions

Expert Analysis — Should You Invest Now?

If your interest is in GMADA-allotted land pooling plots or Aerotropolis LOIs specifically because of this announcement, the honest answer is: this strengthens the medium-term case, but it does not remove the underlying risks that have defined this market through 2025 and 2026 — policy revisions, court disputes in specific pockets, and a track record of delayed, not denied, delivery. If your interest is in established, fully built property in Mohali’s core sectors, this announcement is reassuring background context rather than a direct reason to act today.

Either way, the right move is the same one it always is in this corridor: verify the specific notification, project phase, and legal status of any land or plot before committing capital, and work with someone who tracks GMADA’s notifications as they are issued.

Conclusion

Punjab’s decision to develop villages alongside the townships built on their land is, on its own terms, an overdue correction to how Greater Mohali has expanded for nearly twenty years. It does not eliminate the real risks — court disputes, policy volatility, execution delays — that have shaped this market through 2025 and 2026. But it does close one of the most legitimate gaps in the entire expansion story, with a specific, dated commitment that is far easier to hold the government accountable to than the vague promises that preceded it. For anyone with land, a home, or capital in this corridor, that distinction is worth tracking closely over the next three years.