Sir Sobha Singh

Sardar Bahadur Sir Sobha Singh OBE (1890–18 April 1978) was a civil contractor and a prominent builder of Lutyens' Delhi and real estate owner of Delhi. He is the father of famous Indian writer Khushwant Singh.

Sobha Singh was born in 1890, in the village lura Hadali in Khushab, Shahpur District - then part of British India (now Pakistan). He was the elder of the two sons of Sujan Singh and Lakshmi Devi, the younger one being Sardar Ujjal Singh, who was a Member of Parliament in India from the state of Punjab.

After a few years at school in Amritsar, he joined his father's business of civil construction dealing in the laying of railway tracks and the digging of tunnels.

When Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, announced the plan to move the British Indian capital city to Delhi was along with the Coronation Durbar for King George V and the Queen Mary, would take place in Delhi in December 1911, Sujan Singh and 22-year-old Sobha Singh, who was then a contractor working on the Kalka-Shimla railroad, shifted base to Delhi as building contractors. Building contracts then being given out. Sujan Singh-Sobha Singh were accepted as senior-grade contractors. Plans for the new city were drawn immediately after the Coronation Durbar.

The Foundation stones had been laid by the King and Queen. After this the architects, Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker wanted to change the site from where the foundation stones had been laid to Raisina hill and the village of Malcha. Sobha Singh had the foundation stones removed during the night and then take them 11 km across the city and replant them on the new site. The construction of the plans were taken up after World War I (1914–18).

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