No central funds, HP mulls PPP mode for satellite township

With little headway in getting central funding for the proposed mountain satellite township at Jathia Devi, the Himachal Government is contemplating pushing the much-delayed project under public-private partnership (PPP) mode.

The decade-old project has been hanging fire with the state government looking for central funding to execute the project. This will be the first satellite township in the state. The main objective of the satellite township, 14 km from here, is to decongest the state capital of Shimla by shifting some government offices and setting up housing societies. “We had sought Rs 500 crore funding under Urban Challenge Fund from the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, but there has been no response so far. So we are contemplating executing it under the PPP mode,” said Town and Country Planning Minister Rajesh Dharmani. It is an important move aimed at easing pressure on Shimla, he added.

He revealed that Himachal Urban Development Authority (HIMUDA) has acquired two chunks of 350 and 250 bighas at Jathia Devi for setting up the mountain satellite township. The state government issued a notification on January 23, 2024, creating the Jathia Devi Planning Area.

This was done as a step towards ensuring planned and regulated development in the area where land has been acquired for the satellite township. This new planning area has been created by excluding 177 villages in the Shimla and Shoghi area in the districts of Shimla and Solan. Officials said the Jathia Devi Planning Area had been created as a pre-requisite to the Centre’s norms for seeking funding for the satellite township.

During the Virbhadra regime, an agreement had been signed with a Singapore-based company for the setting up of the satellite township. However, the project became economically unviable following the restrictions imposed by the NGT on high-rise structures in a bid to check high-rise and haphazard construction activity in the town.

There was little headway on the project even during the BJP regime. The detailed project report of the project was submitted to the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Development. Sikkim, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are the other states that are competing with Himachal for the mountain township.

Himachal Tribune