Narela may soon be renamed Vindhyachal. According to officials of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the move to rename the sub-city is to give it a “new image”.
Vindhyachal or the Vindhays refers to the disjointed network of mountains, hills and plateaus in western and central India, stretching from Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh.
But the village of Narela, which lies at the northern edge of Delhi, after which the sub-city is named, will retain its name.
“We have many projects there and are also building a world-class education city now… so we want to give it a new image,” a senior DDA official said.
“Dwarka and Rohini were also new names given to the sub-cities; they didn’t exist before. Similarly, a new suitable name was found for Narela… The renaming is in accordance with the features of the sub-city, such as its eco-friendly milieu, a large green cover, and open spaces. The new name will give the project a new identity and is commensurate with its beautiful location and the kind of infrastructure already developed,” said another official.
In recent years, a number of educational institutes, including the National Institute of Technology and the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women, have been allotted land parcels in Narela. This March, plans for a sports city in Narela were also unveiled, with L-G V K Saxena aiming to position the area as an educational and sports hub.
The Narela sub-city is one of the three mega sub-city projects of DDA, the others being Dwarka and Rohini. “The sub-city would be a unique conglomeration of diverse activities — affordable, functional, environmentally sustainable, recreationally adequate and aesthetically pleasing,” according to the DDA’s website.
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Zone P-1 — Delhi has been divided into 15 planning zones, according to the Master Plan 2021 — which houses the Narela sub-city project, is spread across 9,866 hectares. The project is spread over 3,828 hectares, with the rest falling under green development and land pooling areas.
While work in Narela started in the late 1980s, alongside Rohini and Dwarka sub-cities, construction picked up only around 2000, and DDA started offering flats for purchase between 2008 and 2010, said A K Jain, former planning commissioner, DDA.
Over the years, DDA has struggled to find buyers for its housing inventory in Narela, primarily due to a lack of connectivity with other parts of Delhi. The Union Cabinet approved the proposal for the Rithala-Narela-Nathupur (Kundli) corridor of Delhi Metro’s Phase-IV project last December, which is expected to be completed in the next 4-5 years.
Sales of affordable housing have seen an increase after the approval of the Metro corridor, according to DDA officials.
