Saharanpur is a city and a

municipal corporation A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local governing body, including (but not necessarily limited to) cities, counties, towns, townships, charter townships, villages, and boroughs. The term can also be used to describe municipally ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. It is also the

administrative Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...

headquarters of Saharanpur district. Saharanpur city's name was given after the Saint Shah Haroon Chishti. Saharanpur is declared as one amongst the 100 Smart Cities by MOUD as a part of

Smart Cities Mission National Smart Cities Mission is an urban renewal and retrofitting program by the Government of India with the mission to develop smart cities across the country, making them citizen friendly and sustainable. The Union Ministry of Urban Devel ...

of the

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

Geography and climate

Weeks Edwin Lord Indian Barbers Saharanpore

Saharanpur is located at , about south-southeast of

Chandigarh Chandigarh () is a planned city in India. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the west and the south, and by the state of Haryana to the east. It constitutes the bulk of the Chandigarh Capital Region or Greater Chandigarh, which a ...

, north-northeast of

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...

, north-northeast of

Shamli Shamli is a city and the headquarters of Shamli district, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is a part of Delhi NCR and is an administrative subdivision under Saharanpur division. History According to the mythological story, in Dawpar yug ...

and about south-west of Dehradun. It has an average elevation of . Saharanpur is a part of a geographical

doab ''Doab'' () is a term used in South Asia Quote: "Originally and chiefly in South Asia: (the name of) a strip or narrow tract of land between two rivers; spec. (with) the area between the rivers Ganges and Jumna in northern India." for the tract ...

region. Saharanpur district join four states together

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...

Uttarakhand Uttarakhand ( , or ; , ), also known as Uttaranchal ( ; the official name until 2007), is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the "Devbhumi" (literally 'Land of the Gods') due to its religious significance and ...

and

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land a ...

Demographics

According to the

2011 Indian census The 2011 Census of India or the 15th Indian Census was conducted in two phases, house listing and population enumeration. The House listing phase began on 1 April 2010 and involved the collection of information about all buildings. Information ...

, Saharanpur had a population of 705,478, 12.5% of whom were under the age of six, living in 129,856 households within the municipal corporation limits. The city is spread over an area of and with a population density of , is the eleventh most populous city in Uttar Pradesh. Saharanpur had a population of 455,754 in 2001 and 374,945 in 1991.

Male Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization. A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...

s constitute of 52.7% of the total population while

female Female ( symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females ...

s constitute of 47.3% of the total population and thus, the city has a

sex ratio The sex ratio (or gender ratio) is usually defined as the ratio of males to females in a population. As explained by Fisher's principle, for evolutionary reasons this is typically about 1:1 in species which reproduce sexually. Many species d ...

of 891 females for every 1,000 males. The city has an average literacy rate of 76.32%.

Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes The Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are officially designated groups of people and among the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups in India. The terms are recognized in the Constitution of India and the groups are designa ...

account for 14.2% and 0.1% of the population respectively. There are 233,196 people, constituting about 33% of the total population, who live in slums in the city. Roughly half of the city's population are

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

s, who form a slight majority, while Muslims constitute about forty five percent of the total population. Sikhs and

Jain Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...

s are also present in smaller numbers. The most widely spoken language in Saharanpur is

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

, which along with

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' There are significant numbers of Urdu and Punjabi speakers, while

Haryanvi Haryanvi ( ' or '), also known as Bangru, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the state of Haryana in India, and to a lesser extent in Delhi. Haryanvi is considered to be part of the dialect group of Western Hindi, which also includes Kharib ...

is also spoken by some people. The standard dialect of Hindi spoken is the Khari Boli dialect.

Government and politics

Saharanpur city is governed by Saharanpur Municipal Corporation, erstwhile Municipal Council. The city is divided into 4 zones and 70 wards, represented by 70

councillor A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries. Canada Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...

s who were elected by municipal or local elections in 2017 for a five-year term. The head of the administrative wing is the Municipal Commissioner, currently Ms.Gazal Bharadwaj while the head of the elected wing is the

Mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well ...

Sanjeev Walia from the

BJP The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Mo ...

. The city is also part of the Saharanpur Lok Sabha constituency, which elected

Haji Fazlur Rehman Haji Fazlur Rehman is an Indian politician who has been a Member of Lok Sabha for Saharanpur since 2019. Personal life Rehman graduated from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1972. His family are major beef exporters in Uttar Pradesh. Politic ...

from the Bahujan Samaj Party in 2019 as the

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

, and part of the Saharanpur Assembly constituency that elected Ashu Malik from the Samajwadi Party in 2022 as the MLA.

Civic utilities

There is only one sewage treatment plant located in Saharanpur, while most of the waste water is discharged into the Hindon river, further polluting it.

Culture

Places of interest

Company Garden

The Saharanpur Botanical Gardens, known as the Company Garden and once the preserve of British East India Company, is one of the oldest existing gardens in India, dating to before 1750. Then named Farahat-Bakhsh, it was originally a pleasure ground set out by a local chief, Intazam ud-ullah. In 1817, it was acquired by the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

and placed under the authority of the District Surgeon.

Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of ...

says of this Botanical Garden that "''Amongst its greatest triumphs may be considered the introduction of the tea-plant from China, a fact I allude to, as many of my English readers may not be aware that the establishment of the tea-trade in the

Himalaya The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

and

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

is almost entirely the work of the superintendents of the gardens of

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

and Seharunpore.''" In 1887, when the

Botanical Survey of India Botanical Survey of India (BSI) located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was founded on 13 February 1890, is Government of India Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change's organization for survey, research and conservation of pl ...

was set up to reform the country's botanical sciences, Saharanpur became the centre for the survey of the northern Indian

flora Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' ...

. The Garden is seen historically as being second only to the Calcutta Gardens for its contribution to science and economy in India. Under private auspices today, it is full of greenery and has many different kinds of plants and flowers.

Shakumbari Devi Temple

Siddhpeeth Shri Shakumbhari Devi Temple is an important and ancient Hindu temple. It is situated in the Shivalik hills in Behat tehsil, 40 km from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. It is one of the most visited pilgrimage centers in India. Every year lakhs of visitors visit the temple. Shakumbhari devi is a famous Shaktipeeth of maa Durga.

Transport

Two major National Highways pass through Saharanpur — NH 709B and NH 344. The NH 709B originates in Saharanpur and connects it to

via

and

Baghpat Baghpat is a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Bagpat district, which was established in 1997. It is part of the National Capital Region. Etymology The original name of the city was ''Vyaghrap ...

, while the NH 344 connects Saharanpur with

Ambala Ambala () is a city and a municipal corporation in Ambala district in the state of Haryana, India, located on the border with the Indian state of Punjab and in proximity to both states capital Chandigarh. Politically, Ambala has two sub-are ...

, Yamunanagar and Roorkee. Uttar Pradesh State Highway 57, commonly known as Delhi-Yamunotri highway, also passes through the city. The Delhi–Saharanpur–Dehradun Expressway has also been proposed, which will be ready by March 2024. Saharanpur Junction is the primary railway station serving the city. The station is under the administrative control of

Ambala railway division Ambala railway division is one of the five railway divisions under Northern Railway zone ( NR ) of Indian Railways. This railway division was formed on 1 July 1987 and its headquarters is located at Ambala in the state of Haryana. Delhi railway ...

of the

Northern Railways The Northern Railway (NR) is one of the 19 Railway zones of India and the northernmost zone of the Indian Railways. It is headquartered at Baroda House in New Delhi. History Officially notified as a new railway zone on 14 April 1952, i ...

,Ambala Division map and history
and is located at the junction of Moradabad–Ambala line, Delhi–Meerut–Saharanpur line and the Delhi–Shamli–Saharanpur line. Saharanpur was connected with rail lines when the

Scinde, Punjab & Delhi Railway The Scinde, Punjab, Delhi Railway was formed in 1870 from the incorporation of the Scinde Railway, Indus Steam Flotilla, Punjab Railway and Delhi Railway companies. This was covered by the ''Scinde Railway Company's Amalgamation Act'' of 186 ...

completed the ––– line in 1870 connecting (now in Pakistan) with . Another line connecting Saharanpur with Moradabad was completed in 1886. The Shahdara–Saharanpur light railway connecting Shahdara in Delhi with Saharanpur was opened to traffic in 1907. The railway was built in

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...

and total length was . However, due to increasing losses, the railway was closed in 1970. It was later converted to broad gauge and was repopened in the late 1970s. Saharanpur falls on the route of the proposed

Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor or Eastern DFC is an under-construction broad gauge freight corridor in India. The railway will run between Ludhiana in Punjab and Dankuni (near Kolkata) in West Bengal via Khurja in Uttar Pradesh. This railwa ...

project.Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor

References

External links

{{Authority control Cities and towns in Saharanpur district Cities in Uttar Pradesh