Zirakpur Master Plan 2031: Planned For 1.29 Lakh People, Headed For 8 Lakh ज़ीरकपुर मास्टर प्लान 2031: 1.29 लाख लोगों के लिए तैयार, 8 लाख की ओर बढ़ता ਜ਼ੀਰਕਪੁਰ ਮਾਸਟਰ ਪਲਾਨ 2031: 1.29 ਲੱਖ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਲਈ ਯੋਜਨਾਬੱਧ, 8 ਲੱਖ ਵੱਲ ਵਧ ਰਿਹਾ

Zirakpur has a master plan. What it does not have is a town that followed it.

The original plan for the Zirakpur Local Planning Area projected a population of 1,29,038 by 2031. The 2011 census counted 1,05,728 people in the same area, twenty years early. The state's own revision of the plan concluded that Zirakpur would cross its 2031 target within two years, and that on the trend it was running, the planning area was heading for 8,08,974 people by 2031.

A plan built for one and a quarter lakh people, governing a town headed for eight. Nearly everything else about Zirakpur follows from that gap.

Two plans, not one

The original Master Plan 2008-2031 for the Zirakpur Local Planning Area was prepared by Jurong Consultants of Singapore for PUDA, under the regional plan for the Greater Mohali Region that the same consultant drew up. The report places Zirakpur among that region's local planning areas, alongside Central SAS Nagar, Dera Bassi, Banur, Kharar and Mullanpur.

The Punjab government then commissioned a revision, and appointed NF Infratech Service Pvt Ltd of New Delhi to prepare it. That revised report, prepared around 2015 to 2016, is the document GMADA publishes today as the Zirakpur 2031 plan report.

The Jurong plan is the original vision. The revision is the correction, written once it was clear the original had been overtaken.

What the original plan imagined

The Jurong vision was ambitious. Zirakpur was to become a regional centre for the Greater Mohali Region, a premier business hub and what the plan called a distinctive playground for the area. The rivers and their waterfronts were to be enhanced into the town's prime physical assets, with renewable energy, zero effluent discharge, abundant greenery and a walkable environment.

The regional plan also assigned Zirakpur a specific economic role: hardcore manufacturing, warehousing and medium and small manufacturing, with 572 hectares allocated for industry.

That is the town on paper. The revision describes the one that got built instead.

The roads that were built over

The revised report records that proposed roads in the Zirakpur master plan had been encroached by built-up area, and that those proposals therefore cannot be implemented. It names the places: Singhpura, Lohgarh, Dafferpur, Kakrali, Morthikari and Bir Pir Machhaila, along with deviations in the free economic zone.

In a planned sector the road is laid before the houses. In these parts of Zirakpur the houses arrived first and occupied the land where the road was meant to go, and the plan simply had to accept that the road would not be built.

What the town lacked when the revision surveyed it

No storm water drainage. The report states that there is no storm water drainage network laid in Zirakpur town, and that storm water is carried by seasonal nallahs and natural drains.

Almost no parks. Parks covered 0.11 per cent of the area, about 4.8 hectares. The PUDA norm the report applies is a minimum of 6 per cent, which for a planning area of this size means around 262 hectares. The existing total for parks, open space and playgrounds was 9.3 hectares.

Groundwater only. Water came from 17 tubewells supplying 12.45 million litres a day. The report found the groundwater quality good enough that no treatment plant was needed, which also means the town's entire supply rested on its aquifer.

One treatment plant. Sewage went to a single plant at Singhpura with a capacity of 17.3 million litres a day.

Against those, the revision projected what 2031 would need: water at 109.2 million litres a day, sewage at 87.36, and solid waste at 364 tonnes a day, against 33 tonnes at the time of the survey. Each is several times what existed, and each is calculated on the eight lakh projection rather than the original one.

What the revision changes

The revised plan redraws the planning area rather than simply updating it.

The area grows from the original 3,829 hectares to 4,358.77 hectares, with two villages added to accommodate the growth: Rampur, at 233.98 hectares, and Dailpura, at 296.66 hectares.

Residential land rises from about 22 per cent of the area in the existing survey to 33.25 per cent in the proposal, which the report describes as inevitable given the population. Mixed land use, combining residential, commercial and institutional, is proposed along PR-7, reflecting what had already happened along the town's roads. Brick kilns, stone crushers and other incompatible uses are marked for removal. Existing built-up area alone accounts for 26.32 per cent of the planning area, a measure of how much of the plan had to be written around what already stood.

The road hierarchy is set out from R0, the 60 metre right of way on the national highways, down through R1 at 60 metres for roads such as PR-7, to R5 at 20 metres.

The two roads the plan was built around

PR-7 is the major arterial running south-east from between Sectors 66-A and 81 in Mohali, giving better access between Mohali and Zirakpur, Dera Bassi and Panchkula, and linking through PR-9 to the airport terminal. It is the road the revised plan builds its mixed land use around.

PR-10 runs south from Panchkula Sector 20, east of and parallel to the Shimla highway, to the proposed GMADA expressway and on toward Delhi. Its stated purpose is to bypass the congested Zirakpur intersection of the three national highways, and to carry freight to the industrial areas planned at Dera Bassi.

PR-10 was the master plan's answer to the junction problem. The Zirakpur bypass now under contract with NHAI runs from the Patiala highway near Bir Chhat around the town to the Parwanoo highway near Old Panchkula, and the Union government has stated that its alignment in Punjab follows the state master plan. More than a decade after the plan named the problem, a road to solve it has been approved and contracted.

Why the report says Zirakpur grew

The revision's section on the town's growth begins with a reasonable point: land was scarce across Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali, and affordable property was hard to find in the first two.

The rest of the section reads differently. The ₹28 to 40 lakh price range it cites is attributed to real estate marketers, who it says consider Zirakpur the best location to invest. It describes the town as pollution free, with parks for children, open areas and walking paths, and ends by recommending Zirakpur to anyone priced out of Chandigarh flats.

That passage sits in the same government report that measured parks at 0.11 per cent of the land and found no storm water network at all. The planning survey and the growth narrative describe two different towns.

The survey is the one that holds up. Zirakpur grew because it was cheaper than the planned cities around it, and it was cheaper partly because it had not been planned. The same absence of a prior framework that kept prices down is the reason the roads were built over and the drains were never laid.

What the plan can and cannot tell a buyer

The revision, not the Jurong original, reflects the town as it is.

The encroached alignments are named. A property in Singhpura, Lohgarh, Dafferpur, Kakrali, Morthikari or Bir Pir Machhaila may sit on land the plan once intended for a road.

The report records no storm water network in the town, so drainage is a colony-by-colony question, and the monsoon is the test.

The town's connectivity turns on the bypass, which has been approved and contracted but not yet built.

And in a town that grew colony by colony, the approval status of each colony is something no master plan can tell you.

The revised plan sets out what Zirakpur was meant to be, records where that became impossible, and redraws the rest around what was built in the meantime.

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Sources

- Revised Master Plan Zirakpur, NF Infratech Service Pvt Ltd for the Government of Punjab, published by the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority, for the original Jurong plan and its vision, the 1,29,038 projection for 2031, the 2011 census population and the trend projections of 2,92,461 for 2021 and 8,08,974 for 2031, the encroached road alignments, the absence of a storm water drainage network, the parks, water, sewerage and solid waste figures, the revised planning area of 4,358.77 hectares, the addition of Rampur and Dailpura, the proposed land use distribution, the road hierarchy, the PR-7 and PR-10 alignments, and the report's account of why Zirakpur grew
- Zirakpur (2031), Greater Mohali Area Development Authority, for the plan, report and revenue master plan
- Zirakpur (2031) Revenue Master Plan, Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority, for the revenue master plan
- Cabinet approves construction of 6 lane access controlled Zirakpur Bypass, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, for the route of the bypass under contract between NH-7 and NH-5 and its alignment following the Punjab master plan