GMADA Sector 87 Land Acquisition: The 196-Acre Award Was Postponed With No New Date GMADA सेक्टर 87 भूमि अधिग्रहण: 196 एकड़ का मुआवज़ा बिना किसी नई तारीख के स्थगित कर दिया गया GMADA ਸੈਕਟਰ 87 ਜ਼ਮੀਨ ਐਕਵੀਜ਼ੀਸ਼ਨ: 196 ਏਕੜ ਦਾ ਐਵਾਰਡ ਬਿਨਾਂ ਕਿਸੇ ਨਵੀਂ ਤਾਰੀਖ ਦੇ ਮੁਲਤਵੀ ਕਰ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਗਿਆ

At 11am on Friday, landowners from four villages walked into the committee hall on the second floor of GMADA's office at PUDA Bhawan, Sector 62, to hear what their land was worth.

They found empty chairs.

The Land Acquisition Collector was not there. Nor were the top officials who had been under the Enforcement Directorate's watch since Tuesday morning. The khewatdars had received no notice that the announcement was off, and nobody gave them a new date.

Sohana's numberdar, Harvinder Singh, said he tried to meet other officers but found neither the Land Acquisition Collector nor the other officials present. "I was just told by subordinates that today's award announcement has been postponed. No new date has been fixed yet," he said, as reported by The Tribune.

A GMADA spokesperson said he had no information to share.

What was supposed to happen

The announcement concerned the award on 196.44 acres across Sohana, Manakmajra, Nanumajra and Sambhalki, being acquired to expand the commercial area of Sector 87 in Mohali.

The award is not a formality. It is the stage at which compensation is determined: what each landowner is actually paid for land the state is taking. The notification and the declaration come before it. The award is the number.

For these four villages it has been a long approach. In March, GMADA issued a notification to acquire 502 acres across six villages, covering Sector 87 along with the industrial parks planned for Sectors 101 and 103. The Sector 87 portion was 19.6 acres in Manakmajra, 116.9 acres in Nanumajra, 65 acres in Sohana and one kanal in Sambhalki. The notification was published in the Punjab Government Gazette, and objections were invited within 60 days.

The Tribune reported at the time that the acquisition was being carried out under the old Land Pooling Policy, under which landowners would have the option of payment or plots.

That notification also carried a ban on the purchase and sale of the notified land. From the date it was published, landowners in those villages could no longer register a sale.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development declared 196.4 acres across the same four villages a resettlement area for the commercial infrastructure in Sector 87, with a further 30 days given for objections.

So the people who sat down in that committee hall on Friday had been unable to sell their land since March, and had come to hear the figure the whole process was leading to. The process has been running since spring, and it stopped at the award stage.

Why the room was empty

The postponement came the day after the ED concluded a 50-hour search and seizure operation at the same office on Thursday afternoon.

The Tribune reported that several GMADA departments remained dysfunctional on Friday, with little official work being done and footfall at the Sector 62 office lower than on a normal weekday. Senior officials were unavailable for comment throughout the day. A day earlier, Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema had alleged at a press conference that the ED had wasted three days of official work at the authority.

A farmer union leader described the scene at the office as a case of "the hunter becoming the hunted," The Tribune reported, and demanded strict action against officials who he said had harassed farmers for years. A local SAD leader posted a video on social media from outside the main gate, standing with folded hands, highlighting the silence inside.

No official has linked the two. What is on the record is that the officials required to announce the award had been under the ED's watch since Tuesday, and that the award did not happen.

What else is waiting on the same officials

IT City councillor Nasib Singh Sandhu has said he fears the meeting between officials and IT City allottees and transferees scheduled for 29 September, to discuss enhancement charges, may go the same way.

Those charges were set at ₹7,845 per square yard after a GMADA agenda meeting in January, and affect around 7,000 allottees and transferees in IT City Sectors 82, 83-A and 66-B. GMADA called the allottees to explain how it arrived at the figure following directions from the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The first public hearing was held on 15 September, and the next was fixed for 29 September.

The Sector 101 and 103 industrial park acquisitions, notified alongside Sector 87 in March, run through the same office. GMADA's ongoing land acquisition page also carries public notices for the Landchester Infrastructure Associates project at Manakpur Kalar, and for acquisitions in Nadiayali, Matra and Molibaidwan (Sector 80), while a separate notice sets out land pooling plot size options for Eco City 3.

Every one of those depends on the same offices being staffed and functioning.

What it means if your land is in the four villages

The transaction bar has not lifted. A postponed award does not release the land. Under Section 11(4) of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, no transaction in notified land can be made until the acquisition proceedings are complete, unless the Collector grants an exemption on the owner's application. The proceedings are not complete.

Nothing has been decided about compensation. The award is where the figure is fixed. Until it is announced, there is no amount to accept or to challenge before the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority under Section 64 of the Act.

The delay is not, on the record, a change of plan. No notification has been withdrawn and no scheme has been shelved. What happened on Friday is an announcement that did not take place on the day it was scheduled, with no replacement date given.

The new date has not been published anywhere. The Land Acquisition Collector's office at PUDA Bhawan, Sector 62, is the office that fixes it, and landowners in these four villages are entitled to be told when the award will be announced.

For anyone else in the district with land under acquisition, this is the first visible consequence of the week for landowners. An office that is not working is not issuing awards or holding the meetings people have been waiting on, and that reaches a landowner in Sohana before it reaches anyone else.

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Sources

- Day after ED's 50-hour 'surgical strike', GMADA office wears deserted look, Gaurav Kanthwal, The Tribune, 25 September 2026, for the postponement of the award on 196.44 acres in Sohana, Manakmajra, Nanumajra and Sambhalki, the empty committee hall at 11am, the absence of the Land Acquisition Collector and top officials, the numberdar's account, the GMADA spokesperson's response, the state of the office on Friday, the Finance Minister's remarks, the farmer union and SAD reactions, and the IT City councillor's concern about the 29 September meeting
- GMADA issues notification to acquire 502 acres in six villages of Mohali district, Gaurav Kanthwal, The Tribune, 10 March 2026, for the village-wise breakdown of the Sector 87 acquisition, the 60-day objection window, the Land Pooling Policy option, and the ban on the purchase and sale of the notified land
- Govt notifies resettlement areas for industrial park, commercial hub in Mohali, Gaurav Kanthwal, The Tribune, 17 July 2026, for the declaration of 196.4 acres across the four villages as a resettlement area for commercial infrastructure in Sector 87, the Gazette publication, and the 30-day objection window
- Mohali: GMADA to recover additional price from IT City allottees, The Tribune, January 2026, for the ₹7,845 per square yard enhancement rate and the January agenda meeting
- MLA promises way out as allottees of IT City, Mohali, resent enhancement charges, The Tribune, January 2026, for the roughly 7,000 allottees in IT City Sectors 82, 83-A and 66-B
- Mohali: IT City allottees called for meeting by GMADA over enhancement fee, The Tribune, September 2026, for the High Court direction and the 15 September meeting
- IT City allottees confront GMADA over 'enhancement charges', The Tribune, September 2026, for the public hearing and the next hearing fixed for 29 September
- Ongoing land acquisition, Greater Mohali Area Development Authority, for the live acquisition notices at Manakpur Kalar, Nadiayali, Matra and Molibaidwan, and the Eco City 3 land pooling plot size notice
- Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, Government of India, for the Section 11(4) transaction bar and the Section 64 reference to the Authority