GATE 2027 in Mandi: Exam City, IIT Roorkee Zone and Nearby Institutes

The exam-city page has a single entry, "Mandi", under Himachal Pradesh. It sits beside seven other Himachal names: Bilaspur, Hamirpur, Kangra, Kullu, Palampur, Shimla-Solan and Una. All eight belong to the IIT Roorkee zone.

The list does not say where in Mandi the centres will be, and it does not split the district. Your admit card gives the address.

Four rules decide how you fill the form. You pick six cities, and all six must be from one zone. The list is tentative, so GATE can add or remove a city. GATE may allot you a city outside your six if it has to. And GATE 2027 is held only in India, so an overseas centre is not an option.

A Mandi student has an easy time with back-ups, because every other Himachal name is in the same zone. Kullu, Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Kangra and Palampur can all go on the form, and none of them breaks the one-zone rule.

One order for a student who lives in Mandi town:

1. Mandi
2. Kullu
3. Hamirpur
4. Bilaspur
5. Palampur
6. Kangra

Swap the tail for Shimla-Solan or Una if you have family there. The Hamirpur page works through the same eight Himachal names from the other side of the district.

If you study in the plains and only come home for holidays, Mohali-Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jalandhar-Phagwara, Patiala and Ambala are also in the zone. You could, for example, keep Mandi first and put Mohali-Chandigarh and Jalandhar-Phagwara further down. Rank by where you can spend the night before the paper, not by which name looks bigger.

The IIT Roorkee zone runs across Himachal, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Ambala and five west Uttar Pradesh cities. Two neighbouring blocks fall outside it.

On the list	Zone	On a Mandi form?
Mandi, Kullu, Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Kangra, Palampur, Shimla-Solan, Una	IIT Roorkee	Yes
Mohali-Chandigarh, Amritsar, Bathinda, Jalandhar-Phagwara, Ludhiana, Pathankot, Patiala	IIT Roorkee	Yes
Ambala, Dehradun, Roorkee, Haldwani, Almora, Pauri-Garhwal	IIT Roorkee	Yes
NOIDA, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar	IIT Roorkee	Yes
Jammu - Samba, Srinagar, Leh	IIT Delhi	No
New Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Greater NOIDA	IIT Delhi	No

Two catches. NOIDA is allowed but Greater NOIDA is not, because they sit in different zones. And "Bilaspur" appears twice on the list: the Himachal one is IIT Roorkee zone, while the Chhattisgarh one is IIT Kharagpur zone. Pick the entry under Himachal Pradesh.

If your college is in Jammu or Delhi, you have to choose between a Himachal-and-Punjab list and a list around your college. The Jammu and Delhi pages cover that side.

Mandi is a road town. The district administration's travel page names Kiratpur Sahib in Punjab as the nearest railway station, with Chandigarh and Kalka as broad-gauge alternatives linked by bus and taxi. It puts Mandi about 200 km from Chandigarh, roughly five hours by bus or four by taxi, and says buses run often from Delhi's Kashmiri Gate ISBT and from Chandigarh's Sector 43 bus stop. The nearest airport is Kullu at Bhuntar, about 60 km away.

So if you are coming home from a college in the plains, arrive the day before. Find the centre in daylight, check how long the last stretch takes, and keep a margin for the road.

If you are writing both DA and CS, the two-paper rules say the second paper's centre may differ from the first, but it stays in the same city. Read both entries on the admit card. Carry the printed card, the original photo ID you entered on the form, and anything else the card lists.

Your zone's coordinating institute is IIT Roorkee, Roorkee 247 667: gate@iitr.ac.in, 01332-284531. Write from your registered email and quote your enrolment ID.

Questions about the application portal or the papers go to IIT Madras, the organising institute: helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200.

Step	Date
Scrutiny defects fixed without fee	closes 30 November 2026
Data correction window (with fee)	TBA
City allotment notification	4 January 2027
Admit card	TBA
Exams	6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21 February 2027
Results	19 March 2027

The important dates page says every date may change. Registration has closed, so any change of city depends on the correction window.

Two institutes with GATEiit pages are within reach of Mandi:

• IIT Mandi. Its own site places the campus in the Kamand valley, about 14 km from Mandi, on the left bank of the Uhl River at Kamand and Salgi villages.
• NIT Hamirpur, at Anu, Hamirpur, according to its connectivity page.

Each page sets out that institute's GATE routes for DA and CS candidates. Across the border, IIT Ropar, PEC Chandigarh and NIT Jalandhar have pages, and so does IIT Roorkee. The full set is on /institutes.

If you are a final-year student at Kamand, Mandi is the natural first choice, but it is still only a preference. And your exam city has no effect on where you can apply afterwards.

GATEiit is free and online. It has no office or classroom in Mandi or anywhere else.

Begin on your paper's page, GATE DA for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence or GATE CSE for Computer Science and Information Technology. Each has the syllabus and a link to its WhatsApp group.

Past papers are on /pyq and topic sets on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide lay out a plan, and /guides has the others. All six exam days fall on weekends, so a full mock on Saturday or Sunday morning is good practice. For the bigger picture, see the GATE 2027 page and the exam-city overview; the Chandigarh page helps if you study in the tricity.