Gurugram: Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini Wednesday directed officers to prepare a special action plan to complete basic infrastructure, electricity and water supply, at the Global City project in Gurugram within three months, and to draw up a separate plan for a “world-class iconic tower” at the site.
Saini issued the directions while chairing the fourth review meeting of the state’s Pragati Portal in Chandigarh. He said 80 percent of the physical work on the Rs 1,000-crore first phase had been completed and that the remaining work would be finished by December.
The announcement has brought fresh focus to a project that successive Haryana governments have promoted as the next major economic hub after Gurugram’s DLF Cyber City-driven growth in the 1990s and 2000s.
ThePrint looks at what Global City is, who is developing it, and the history of the land beneath it.
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What is Global City
Global City is a mixed land-use township planned across roughly 1,000 acres covering Sectors 36, 36B, 37, 37A and 37B of Gurugram, along the Dwarka Expressway.
The project is being developed as an integrated business and residential district, with office towers, residential blocks, retail spaces, hotels, hospitals, schools, marriage palaces and community centres within the same area.
Saini said Wednesday that once completed, the city would also have a dedicated water treatment plant, a green lake and a link to the Dwarka Expressway. A Namo Bharat Metro train, the rapid rail line connecting Delhi to Gurugram, is also planned to serve the area, according to the Chief Minister.
A senior officer associated with the project told ThePrint that around 80 percent of the physical work had been completed and that the remaining work was expected to be completed by December.
He said once Global City is completed, it will not only modernise basic infrastructure but also create greater employment opportunities for the youth.
Who is developing it
The Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC), a wholly state-owned corporation, is the nodal agency for the project.
The HSIIDC is responsible for developing the core infrastructure, including roads, drainage, power and water networks, sewage infrastructure and utility corridors. It then auctions individual land parcels to private developers, who construct and sell the actual towers, malls and housing.
The HSIIDC awarded a contract worth around Rs 940 crore for first-phase infrastructure covering roughly 570-587 acres in 2023. It has since conducted multiple e-auctions for mixed-use and institutional plots.
Several established Gurugram developers, including Signature Global, M3M India, DLF, Godrej Properties, Sobha, Smartworld, Whiteland and Elan Group, have shown interest in or acquired parcels through these auctions, according to the officer.
When was it conceptualised
The idea of an integrated commercial hub on this stretch of land goes back to 2016, when then industries minister Vipul Goel, under the Manohar Lal Khattar government, described a proposed “Global City” as a node of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor.
The project was pitched to have an investment potential of Rs 1 lakh crore, and was to be developed alongside a proposed Gurugram-Manesar-Bawal rapid transit line funded by Japan’s JICA.
By 2018, Khattar held investor meets in Mumbai and Dubai to attract developers, with the HSIIDC pitching the site as a 1,080-acre “city within a city”.
As it exists today, the project was formally announced in 2019. Then deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala directed HSIIDC officials in December that year to fast-track the project, describing it as a Dubai Business Bay-style hub to be named “Global City, Haryana”.
However, the project saw limited movement for several years.
It was relaunched in earnest in 2023, with the first major land auctions held in November and December that year, roughly seven years after the idea was first floated.
Officials have linked the delay, in part, to prolonged litigation involving land in the area.
Before 2014, during Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s tenure as chief minister, the project was simply known as a proposed “business tower”.
Different from existing Gurugram
Global City is located across Sectors 36 and 37B on the western edge of Gurugram along the Dwarka Expressway. It is roughly 20 minutes from Indira Gandhi International Airport and around 20-30 minutes from the DLF Cyber City business district.
Unlike older Gurugram, which expanded incrementally from the 1990s through multiple private developers operating on individually licensed colonies, Global City is being planned as a single integrated township.
Global City is being planned as a single integrated township with infrastructure laid first by the HSIIDC before private construction begins.
The plan includes common underground utility corridors for cables and pipelines, dedicated bus corridors, an internal transit system and greater green cover, positioning it as a corrective to the congestion and infrastructure gaps that have long marked Gurugram’s growth.
Rajiv Jaitley, media advisor to Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, told ThePrint that while Global City was being developed on the lines of Dubai, the government wanted it to go beyond the Dubai model by learning from its shortcomings.
Jaitley said existing Gurugram, which developed incrementally from the 1990s, continues to face infrastructure challenges, particularly during the monsoon. He said the government had been working to address these issues.
Global City, he said, was being planned from scratch to prevent similar problems. The government sees Global City as a potential economic engine for Gurugram after Cyber City.
The project is intended to attract corporate and residential investment, generate employment, and provide Haryana with a major business district that can be showcased to global investors.
The government has floated an investment potential of Rs 1 lakh crore across different stages of the project’s promotion.
How is it being built
The HSIIDC’s approach is to develop trunk infrastructure such as roads, power substations, water and sewage networks, through government funding and contractor tenders.
The corporation then recovers costs and generates revenue by auctioning individual plots to private developers under a mixed land-use format.
Plots have been offered in different sizes, with commercial parcels attracting significant interest because of the project’s location along the Dwarka Expressway.
The state has also proposed a single-window clearance system so that industries and developers operating within Global City can access permissions and services such as power and water without approaching multiple departments separately.
The land
The land on which Global City is being developed was not acquired specifically for the project. It was carved out of a much larger parcel of 1,383.68 acres near Garhi Harsaru in Gurugram district that the HSIIDC had acquired in 2006-07 for a different project.
In June 2006, the HSIIDC entered into a joint-venture agreement with Reliance Ventures Ltd, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, to develop a 25,000-acre multi-product Special Economic Zone. The project was to be developed through Reliance Haryana SEZ Ltd (RHSL).
The Haryana Cabinet, then headed by Bhupinder Singh Hooda, approved the transfer of the HSIIDC’s acquired land to the RHSL. The HSIIDC was to be reimbursed for the compensation it had paid farmers, along with interest and administrative charges.
The SEZ proposal subsequently ran into trouble after the Centre withdrew fiscal incentives for such zones in 2011, making the project commercially unviable.
The RHSL offered in January 2012 to return the land. The Haryana Cabinet approved the return in February 2014, along with HSIIDC’s exit from the joint venture.
Reliance formally returned 1,383.68 acres to HSIIDC in August 2014.
The state government subsequently carved out roughly 1,000-1,002 acres from this land bank across Sectors 36, 36B, 37, 37A and 37B for what would eventually become Global City. The project was first floated as an idea in 2016 and formally announced as “Global City, Haryana” in 2019.
(Edited by Jeyasri AT)
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