GATE 2027 in Srinagar: Exam City, IIT Delhi Zone and Winter Back-ups

The official exam-city page has two names under Jammu and Kashmir: "Srinagar" and "Jammu - Samba". Both sit in the IIT Delhi zone, along with "Leh" for Ladakh.

A second Srinagar confuses people every year. It is in Pauri Garhwal district, Uttarakhand, where NIT Uttarakhand has its campus. The list has no Uttarakhand city called Srinagar. Uttarakhand's entries are Almora, Dehradun, Haldwani, Pauri-Garhwal and Roorkee, all in the IIT Roorkee zone. So if you tick "Srinagar" on the form, you are asking for Kashmir. A student in Srinagar Garhwal should read the Dehradun page instead.

The form rule is simple to state and easy to break. You choose six cities, all six from one zone. The list is tentative: GATE may add or drop a city, and may allot you a city outside your six. GATE 2027 is held only in India.

If you study in Punjab, Himachal or Chandigarh, this is where the zone rule bites. Every listed city in Punjab, Himachal and Chandigarh sits in a different zone.

Cities on the list	Zone
Srinagar, Jammu - Samba, Leh	IIT Delhi
New Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Greater NOIDA, Mathura	IIT Delhi
Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Kota, Udaipur and the rest of Rajasthan	IIT Delhi
Indore, Ujjain	IIT Delhi
Pathankot, Amritsar, Jalandhar-Phagwara, Ludhiana, Mohali-Chandigarh, Patiala	IIT Roorkee
Kangra, Una, Hamirpur, Mandi, Shimla-Solan	IIT Roorkee
Dehradun, Pauri-Garhwal, NOIDA, Ghaziabad	IIT Roorkee

Srinagar with Mohali-Chandigarh is not allowed. Srinagar with Pathankot is not allowed either. Watch the Delhi names too: Greater NOIDA is IIT Delhi zone, NOIDA and Ghaziabad are not.

If you are at a college in Punjab or Himachal, pick a side. An IIT Delhi-zone list keeps Srinagar. An IIT Roorkee-zone list keeps your college city, and the Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Hamirpur pages cover that side.

GATE falls in February, and that shapes the back-up list more than anything else. The Srinagar district administration's how-to-reach page puts Jammu about 290 km away on NH-44 through the Banihal tunnel, roughly six to seven hours by road. The same page warns that NH-44 can be hit by landslides or snowfall from November to March, and that the Srinagar-Leh highway is closed in winter and usually opens in May.

Two things follow. If Srinagar is your first choice and you live in the valley, the exam is close to home and the main risk is the weather on the morning itself. If GATE moves you to Jammu - Samba, you will be crossing the Banihal side in winter, so travel the day before and check the Traffic Police J&K advisories the district page mentions. Leh is in the zone, but in February you cannot drive there from Srinagar.

A sensible order for a valley student:

1. Srinagar
2. Jammu - Samba
3. New Delhi
4. Gurugram
5. Faridabad
6. Greater NOIDA

If you will be in Delhi for an internship in February, put New Delhi first and see the Delhi page. The Jammu page explains the Jammu - Samba listing.

The zone's coordinating institute is IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110 016: gateoffice@admin.iitd.ac.in, phone 011-26591749. Write from your registered email address and quote your enrolment ID.

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

Registration is closed. The paid data-correction window is listed as TBA on the important dates page, so treat your city choices as fixed. City allotment is due on 4 January 2027, the admit card date is TBA, and results come on 19 March 2027.

Your admit card names the centre and the reporting time. Look the address up the day it arrives, because a centre on the other side of the city in winter traffic is a different morning from one near home.

If you are flying in, the district page lists Sheikh ul-Alam International Airport at Humhama, Budgam, about 14 km from the city centre. By rail, Srinagar station is on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla line, which runs from Udhampur via Katra, Banihal and Qazigund. Arrive the day before rather than on the exam morning.

Writing DA and CS together? The two-paper rules say the second paper's centre may differ from the first but will be in the same city. Read both entries on the card.

Carry the printed admit card, the original photo ID you gave in the form, and anything else the card lists. Its instructions are the final word.

Two institutes in the UT have GATEiit pages:

• NIT Srinagar, at Hazratbal, Srinagar, on the banks of Dal Lake.
• IIT Jammu, at Jagti, PO Nagrota, Jammu.

Each page explains the institute's GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates. In the other zone, IIT Mandi, NIT Hamirpur, IIT Ropar and NIT Jalandhar have pages too, as does IIT Delhi. Browse the rest on /institutes.

Your exam city has nothing to do with admissions. Writing GATE in Srinagar gives no edge at NIT Srinagar, and writing it in Jammu costs you nothing at IIT Mandi.

GATEiit is a free online site. It has no centre or office in Srinagar or anywhere else, which matters little here: what you need is a syllabus, past papers and a timetable.

Start with your paper: GATE DA for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, or GATE CSE for Computer Science and Information Technology. Each page has the syllabus and the link to that paper's WhatsApp group.

Past papers are on /pyq and topic sets on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 guide and GATE CSE 2027 guide lay out a plan, and /guides has the rest. Download what you can for offline revision in case winter weather disrupts your connection, and take full mocks on weekend mornings, since every exam day is a Saturday or Sunday. The GATE 2027 page and the exam-city overview fill in the rest.