Zirakpur is a satellite town, in Mohali District, Punjab, neighbouring Chandigarh in India. It is set on the foothills of Shivalik hills. It is part of the tehsil Dera Bassi. It is the gateway to Chandigarh from Delhi. It comprises mainly the following areas near Chandigarh Airport including Dhakoli, Lohgarh, Bhabat, Bishanpura, Kishanpura, Nabha, Gazipur, Baltana, Singhpura, Peer Muchalla and Dyalpura. This town is situated on the junction of national highways Himalayan Expressway, National Highway 5 towards Shimla, Ambala Chandigarh Expressway towards Ambala and National Highway 7 towards Patiala. Assessing cities on the basis of five key parameters — real estate, people, physical infrastructure, social infrastructure and business environment — a recent study concluded that India’s hottest emerging city is Chandigarh. India's first planned city got top ranking for the potential of its real estate market, physical infrastructure and business environment. While there is little space left within the city itself, Chandigarh scores because of the rapid development taking place on its outskirts, in areas like Panchkula, Mohali, Zirakpur and Dera Bassi on the Chandigarh-Ambala highway. Good connectivity, low operational costs and high disposable income also contributed to it being declared India’s hottest emerging city. Zirakpur also has many shopping malls, showrooms, and factory outlets where people can enjoy shopping. Zirakpur is a hub of real estate development in residential and commercial segment. There are approximately 80,000 flats in Zirakpur, and thousands are under construction. Migrating population from Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana is the main consumer of real estate here. There are some big real estate companies like Sushma Group, Maxxus Group, SBP group etc, which have many ongoing and delivered projects here, and are contributing in rapid growth of the sector here.
Areas in Zirakpur
Dayalpura : The nearest area to the planned urban estate of Aerocity, IT city Mohali and Chandigarh International Airport. Poised to be the posh area of Zirakpur with many big projects in pipeline. The 200 ft wide planned road through Dayalpura would connect Zirakpur directly to Besttech tower chauk in Mohali near Chandigarh border, shortening the distance of whole Zirakpur. There is a large chunk of shaamlat land, where govt is building a big hospital like GMCH32 Chandigarh. A top-class stadium for special sportspersons, a police station, a big municipal park and some other municipal department buildings are also being planned here.
Chhat : The Chatbir Zoo is famous all around northern India, and see a large number of daily tourists.
Zirakpur got its name from a small village, which is now a part of the present Zirakpur town. For long it remained a bunch of small villages located along the Chandigarh-Ambala highway. Then Chandigarh started to expand and these villages started to seem like a part of Chandigarh. Before the year 2000, the city had a population of less than twenty thousand. Soon a small village Baltana, which is a part of Zirakpur now, started having some population growth being near to Panchkula and Chandigarh. From 2004 onwards the city's population started to increase rapidly, with booming property prices and the arrival of a large number of residential projects in the suburbs.
Public transport
Zirakpur is well connected through air-conditioned and non air-conditioned local buses with Chandigarh, Panchkula and other neighboring areas. The inter-state buses going from Chandigarh to Delhi, Patiala, Rajpura, Bathinda and most of the northern cities of Haryana pass through Zirakpur. Zirakpur is located on the Ambala-Chandigarh highway and the Patiala-Shimla highway. The nearest railway station is Chandigarh, which is around 8 km from Zirakpur. The nearest airport is situated in Chandigarh at around 5 km from Zirakpur. On 28 April 2016Sukhbir Singh Badal, then deputy chief minister of Punjab announced Zirakpur to be developed as model city with all modern facilities and amenities.
Retail
Zirakpur has a number of shopping malls including easyday, metro, D mart, Cosmo Mall, and big bazaar. It also has showrooms of Reebok, Nike, Adidas, etc. Restaurants include Haldirams, Dominos, KFC, McDonalds and dhabas near the highway.
Wedding industry
Zirakpur is the 'Wedding capital' of the region. About 80% of the wedding banquets and resorts of the Chandigarh tri-city are located in Zirakpur. Wedding fireworks in the sky are a routine occasion in the town.
Civic amenities
The NHAI has made one of the longest flyovers of the regions passing through Zirakpur on Chandigarh Delhi highway. On the Zirakpur-Shimla highway, the railway over-bridge completed in 2011 has considerably improved the connectivity with Panchkula. The Airport Road makes a trip to Mohali shorter and efficient, although recently the airport road has caved in at multiple locations due to poor construction quality leading to several fatal accidents. The Municipal authorities Zirakpur have been under sharp criticism from the various resident associations of the area for not maintaining the roads and thereby leading to dangerous situations for the people commuting. The process to divide Zirakpur into various sectors like Chandigarh has been initiated, as per latest Municipal Council meeting. There have been demand to name Zirakpur as "South Chandigarh", and sectors numbers starting from 201 onwards. This would give unique sector numbers to whole Tricity, with Panchkula sector numbers starting from 301 and Mullanpur sector numbers starting from 401, thus making addresses short and removing confusion arising of same sector numbers in adjoining towns.
Health facilities
Zirakpur has a number of small and medium-sized hospitals catering to its primary health needs. Though it still lacks the presence of any big govt. college and hospital, relative to its population. It may be constructed in near future, as Zirakpur MC have sufficient shamlat land available.
Temples and Gurudwaras
Temple, Sanatan Dharam Mandir, Gurudwara Naada Sahib, Gurudwara Lohgarh Sahib, Gurudwara Bauli Sahib, Shiv Mandir-Green City, Gurudwara nabha sahib, and Gurudwara Singpura sahidaa are here.
Demographics
The Zirakpur Municipal Council has population of 95,553 of which 50,497 are males while 45,056 are females as per report released by Census India 2011. Population of children with age of 0–6 is 12074 which is 12.64 % of total population of Zirakpur. In Zirakpur Municipal Council, Female Sex Ratio is of 892 against state average of 895. Moreover, Child Sex Ratio in Zirakpur is around 855 compared to Punjab state average of 846. Literacy rate of Zirakpur city is 88.30 % higher than state average of 75.84 %. In Zirakpur, male literacy is around 91.36 % while female literacy rate is 84.90 %.
