Original Manesar village was a sleepy village of about 1000 dwellings on the Delhi-Jaipur highway, then numbered as NH-8. Since the late 1990s, it has been transformed into a boom town. Its growth has been helped by government's drive to move out factories from Delhi as well as the growth of Gurgaon city and proximity to Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport. Farmers have become millionaires or multi-millionaires by selling their lands.
On 17 September 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a First Information Report under various sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy. These were in connection with alleged irregularities involving land acquisitions at IMT Manesar. Subsequently, in 2018, the former Haryana Chief Minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, together with real estate companies, officials of the state government's department of town and country planning and bureaucrats who worked with Hooda while he was Chief Minister were charged. The scam had allegedly resulted in a 15 billion INR loss to farmers in Manesar and the adjoining villages of Naurangpur and Lakhnoula whose land, amounting to, had been threatened with government purchase for "public purpose". Faced with the threat of government acquisition, farmers sold at knock-down prices, averaging 25 percent of market value, to real estate developers. The Hooda government then released the land from the acquisition threat, thus favouring the developers. One of the beneficiary of the scam was Hooda's nephew, Sukhwinder, whose company was given change of land use permission for 52 acres land on the same day the government acquisition process had lapsed for the want of release of funds, while at the same time CLU was denied to two other unrelated applicants. The Supreme Court of India cancelled the acquisition and grant of land to the developers and directed the CBI to inquire further. The government was instructed to "recover every single pie". Court returned the land to Haryana government. Land would not be returned to the landholders more than the prevailing price. The builders will not be allowed to recover any money they paid to land owners as the deal was done to benefit them and "middlemen". The court said:
Proposal for new city
In 2018, the Chief Minister, Manohar Lal Khattar, announced a new city that would adjoin Gurgaon and incorporate an area from Manesar towards Rewari, and also the area around Pataudi. The new city is likely to be spread across at least 50,000 hectares, which is larger than Chandigarh but smaller than Gurgaon.
Connectivity
Manesar lies on National Highway 48 and is served by many local buses and states Roadways buses and trains plying on this route. The nearest railway station is Ghari Harsaru; a major station is at Gurgaon.
The Heritage Transport Museum is situated on a plot at Tauru Gurgaon, near Manesar. A built-up area of over spread over four floors houses the exhibition galleries, library and reference centre, conference rooms, mini auditorium, the museum shop, and a restaurant facility.
Quarantine site
In Januart 2020, the Indian Army set up a quarantine camp in Manesar for suspected cases of Coronavirus disease 2019. 300 Indian students airlifted from Wuhan district of China were quarantined and observed for 14 days, after which those with no symptoms were allowed to go home.
Economy
Some of the industrial units functioning in Manesar are:
