Glossary
The words that get used without being explained.
Dholera comes wrapped in abbreviations, and most of the pages that use them assume you already know what they mean. You do not need to. Below are the 19 terms you will keep running into, each written out in ordinary English, with a link to the sourced answer where there is more detail. If a salesperson uses a word from this list and cannot explain it, that tells you something.
SIR
Special Investment Region
A legal designation, not a marketing word. Gujarat passed the Special Investment Region Act in 2009, and land inside a declared SIR is planned and governed by a dedicated authority rather than by the usual local bodies. Dholera's full legal name is Dholera Special Investment Region. Dholera Smart City is what the marketing calls it.
DSIRDA
Dholera Special Investment Region Development Authority
The statutory authority that handles planning and land for Dholera. If a layout has not been approved by DSIRDA, it has not been approved by the body that matters.
DICDL
Dholera Industrial City Development Limited
The company that actually builds the city. It was set up on 28 January 2016 and is owned 51 per cent by the Gujarat government through DSIRDA and 49 per cent by the central government through the NICDC Trust. Both governments therefore have money in it.
NICDC
National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation
The central government agency in charge of India's industrial corridors. It publishes the delivery-monitoring reports that are among the most reliable Dholera figures anywhere, which is why they are cited so often on this site.
DMIC
Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor
A large industrial-corridor programme built around the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, a goods-only railway. Dholera is one of its nodes and is often described as the largest. A dedicated freight-corridor spur running directly into Dholera is not reliably sourced, so treat that claim carefully.
TP scheme
Town Planning scheme
A Gujarat planning method that pools scattered private land parcels, redraws them into a serviced layout with roads and utilities, and hands each owner a defined plot back. Dholera has six of them, TP1 through TP6, all draft-sanctioned. Land inside a sanctioned TP scheme counts as non-agricultural for construction purposes.
Final Plot
the FP number
When a Town Planning scheme redraws the land, each resulting parcel gets a Final Plot number with a fixed location and area. Asking for the FP number is how you tie a plot in a brochure to a real, sanctioned piece of ground. If nobody can give you one, that is worth noticing.
N.A. status
Non-Agricultural status
Agricultural land has to be converted to non-agricultural use before anything can legally be built on it. Land inside an approved TP scheme is treated as non-agricultural by Gujarat rule. Agricultural land sold as being inside the SIR without this status is one of the oldest tricks in the area.
Activation Area
the first 22.5 sq km
The roughly 22.5 sq km zone inside Town Planning Scheme 2 where the roads, water, power and drainage were built first, so that industry had somewhere ready to move into. It is about 4.25 per cent of the developable land. When people say Dholera has been built, this is usually the part they mean.
Plug-and-play
services already at the plot boundary
It means the underground utilities, power, water, gas, and fibre ducts, go in before anything is built above ground, so a plot arrives with services already at its edge. In the Activation Area that includes a 50 MLD water plant and about 72 km of internal roads.
ICCC
Integrated Command and Control Centre
The room the city is run from. It sits inside the ABCD building, short for Administrative cum Business Centre for Dholera, and it monitors water, power, street lighting, surveillance, traffic and environment from one place.
CRZ
Coastal Regulation Zone
A national rule that restricts construction near the coast. It matters in Dholera because roughly a third of the developable land falls inside it, which is a genuine limit on where anything can be built and not a marketing footnote.
GUJRERA
the Gujarat property regulator
The state authority that registers property projects. A registered project has a number in a set format, and that number can be checked live at gujrera.gujarat.gov.in. The phrase RERA approved with no number attached means nothing at all.
7/12 extract
the land record
The Gujarat land record that names the owner and the land's details. It is checked on AnyROR Gujarat, the state's online land-records portal, and matched against the survey number or Final Plot number written in the brochure you were given.
Encumbrance Certificate
the loans-and-disputes check
A document listing every registered transaction and charge on a property, including loans. For Dholera land the standard check is a 30-year certificate, read alongside the 7/12 extract and the chain of title, to make sure nothing undisclosed is attached to the parcel.
Fab
a semiconductor fabrication plant
A factory that makes chips from blank silicon wafers. The Dholera fab is being built by Tata Electronics with PSMC of Taiwan at an approved cost of Rs 91,000 crore.
Node
the size of the features on a chip
Measured in nanometres. A smaller number means smaller, denser transistors and a more advanced process. Dholera's fab is planned for 28, 40, 55, 90 and 110 nm, which are mature nodes used in cars, appliances and industrial electronics rather than cutting-edge phone processors.
Bigha
an unreliable unit of area
A traditional land measure. In Gujarat it is commonly about 2,500 sq yd, roughly half an acre, but bigha is not standardised and its size varies by region. Never accept a price per bigha without asking whose bigha is being used.
MoU
Memorandum of Understanding
A written statement that two parties intend to work together. It is not a contract, it commits nobody to spend anything, and a great many of the eye-catching Dholera investment figures in the press are attached to one of these rather than to a signed deal.