Mohali, officially known as Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar (commonly abbreviated S.A.S. Nagar), is a planned city in the Indian state of Punjab. It lies adjacent to Chandigarh and Panchkula, with which it forms the urban agglomeration known as the Tricity. Mohali serves as the administrative headquarters of Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar district and is one of Punjab's principal commercial, industrial, and information technology hubs.
| Official name | Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar (S.A.S. Nagar) |
|---|---|
| Common name | Mohali |
| State | Punjab |
| District | Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar |
| Region | Tricity (with Chandigarh and Panchkula) |
| Named after | Sahibzada Ajit Singh, eldest son of Guru Gobind Singh |
| Civic body | Municipal Corporation, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar |
| Languages | Punjabi (official), Hindi, English |
The city was renamed Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar in honour of Sahibzada Ajit Singh, the eldest son of the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, who died in the Battle of Chamkaur in 1705. The older name "Mohali" remains in widespread popular use and is recognised in official references.
Mohali lies in the Sutlej–Ghaggar plain in the foothills of the Shivalik range, in southwestern Punjab. It shares its eastern boundary with the union territory of Chandigarh and is located near Panchkula in Haryana. The city is laid out in a grid of numbered sectors, a planning convention adopted from neighbouring Chandigarh.
Mohali was originally a village in the Kharar tehsil of the erstwhile Ropar district. Following the creation of Chandigarh as the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, the area began to develop as a planned satellite township from the 1970s onward, principally to absorb the spillover of population and industry from Chandigarh. The Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority (PUDA) and its predecessor agencies oversaw the sectoral development of the township.
On 19 March 2006, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar was carved out as a separate district from Ropar (Rupnagar) district, with Mohali as its headquarters. The Municipal Corporation of S.A.S. Nagar was constituted to administer the city's civic affairs.
Mohali is a major centre for information technology, electronics manufacturing, and pharmaceutical industries in northern India. The city hosts an industrial area developed in the 1970s and 1980s, which was one of the early bases of large public-sector electronics enterprises in Punjab. Subsequent expansion has produced an IT City and a knowledge park area, with operations of multinational and domestic technology firms. The city also has a sizeable real estate and education sector.
Mohali hosts several institutions of national importance, including:
The city is home to the Punjab Cricket Association IS Bindra Stadium, an international cricket venue that has hosted Test, One Day International, and Twenty20 International matches, as well as Indian Premier League fixtures of the Punjab Kings franchise. Mohali also has a hockey stadium and other sporting facilities developed under state and central schemes.
Mohali is connected to Chandigarh and Panchkula by a network of arterial roads and is served by the Chandigarh–Ludhiana national highway corridor. The Chandigarh International Airport, located within the territorial limits of Mohali, handles domestic and international flights and is jointly operated for the Tricity. The city is also served by railway stations at Mohali and Chandigarh on the Northern Railway network.
Civic services in Mohali are administered by the Municipal Corporation of Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar. Town planning and large-scale urban development are handled by the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA), constituted under the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act. Law and order is administered by the Mohali (S.A.S. Nagar) police district under the Punjab Police.
As part of the Tricity, Mohali functions as an extension of the Chandigarh metropolitan region while retaining its identity as a Punjabi city with religious and cultural links to Sikh heritage. Its concentration of research institutes, IT parks, and an international airport has made it one of Punjab's most economically significant urban centres in the post-2000 period.