GATE 2027 in Shimla-Solan: Exam City, IIT Roorkee Zone and Institutes

The official exam-city page lists eight Himachal names: Bilaspur, Hamirpur, Kangra, Kullu, Mandi, Palampur, Shimla-Solan and Una. All eight are IIT Roorkee zone.

Shimla and Solan appear only together, as "Shimla-Solan". The form has no separate Shimla option and no separate Solan option. Shimla is the state capital, as the Shimla district site notes, and Solan is the headquarters of its own district, according to the Solan district site. Choosing Shimla-Solan does not tell you which of the two towns, or which place around them, your centre will be in. The admit card does that. When it arrives, read the address before anything else and plan from there.

The Solan administration lists six sub-divisions: Solan, Arki, Kandaghat, Nalagarh, Kasauli and Baddi. None of these has an entry of its own, so a student from Baddi or Nalagarh also chooses from the listed cities.

The general rules: six choices, all from one zone. The list is tentative, GATE may add or remove a city or allot you one outside your six, and the exam is held only in India.

The Shimla district's how-to-reach page has a road table from Shimla. A few rows that matter for your six:

From Shimla to	Distance	Bus time given
Chandigarh	119 km	4 hours
Ambala	116 km	5 hours
Mandi	143 km	5 hours 30 minutes
Kullu	235 km	8 hours
Palampur	235 km	9 hours 30 minutes
Dehradun	245 km	9 hours 30 minutes

Read with the zone list, this means Mohali-Chandigarh and Ambala are nearer by road than most of Himachal, and all three are in your zone. One order for a student living in Shimla:

1. Shimla-Solan
2. Mohali-Chandigarh
3. Ambala
4. Mandi
5. Bilaspur
6. Hamirpur

The "Bilaspur" you want is the one under Himachal Pradesh. A second Bilaspur, under Chhattisgarh, is in the IIT Kharagpur zone. If you study in Punjab or Uttarakhand, swap in your college city, since Ludhiana, Patiala, Dehradun and Roorkee are in the same zone. The Chandigarh, Mandi and Hamirpur pages cover those neighbours.

The IIT Roorkee zone covers all of Himachal, Punjab and Uttarakhand, plus Mohali-Chandigarh, Ambala and a group of western Uttar Pradesh cities including NOIDA and Ghaziabad. The traps are the cities a Shimla student might reach for if they study or work elsewhere:

• Jammu - Samba, Srinagar and Leh are IIT Delhi zone.
• New Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad and Greater NOIDA are IIT Delhi zone.
• NOIDA and Ghaziabad, though, are IIT Roorkee zone.

So a student at a Delhi college who wants Shimla-Solan as a home option can add NOIDA but not New Delhi. The Delhi and Noida pages explain that split.

The Shimla district says its travel times are approximate and vary with driving habits and weather conditions. Treat every hour in that table as a minimum in February.

Students from the upper parts of the district have the longest trip. The same table gives Rohru as 100 km from Shimla and about six hours by bus. If that is you, plan to reach your centre's town the day before.

Other routes, from the same page: the Kalka-Shimla railway takes around six hours from Kalka, and the Himalayan Queen covers the 94 km in 5 hours 30 minutes. Chandigarh Airport is about 120 km away. The smaller Jubbarhatti airport, 23 km from the city, runs only to a limited extent depending on the season and weather. For the Baddi and Nalagarh side, the Una district lists a bus route Shimla, Solan, Baddi, Nalagarh, Kiratpur, Nangal.

On the day, take the printed admit card, the original photo ID you gave in the application, and anything else the card asks for. If you write DA and CS together, the two-paper page says the second centre may differ but stays in the same city.

Exam-city questions go to the IIT Roorkee zone office, Roorkee 247 667: gate@iitr.ac.in, 01332-284531. Write from your registered email with your enrolment ID.

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

According to the important dates page, the city allotment notification is due on 4 January 2027. The admit card date is TBA, and results are due on 19 March 2027.

None of the institutes with a GATEiit page is in Shimla or Solan. Three are elsewhere in the state:

• IIT Mandi, in the Kamand valley, about 14 km from Mandi.
• NIT Hamirpur, at Anu in Hamirpur district.
• IIIT Una, in Una district.

Down in the plains, IIT Ropar and PEC Chandigarh are also worth a look. Each page sets out that institute's GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates; /institutes has the full list.

Your exam city has nothing to do with admissions.

GATEiit is free and online, with no office or classroom in Shimla, Solan or anywhere else.

Start with your paper page: GATE DA for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, or GATE CSE for Computer Science and Information Technology. The syllabus and the WhatsApp group link are there.

Use /pyq for past papers and /practice for topic sets. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide give a week-by-week plan, and /guides has more. If your connection drops in bad weather, download papers when it is good and work offline. The GATE 2027 page and the city overview cover the rest.