Alteration in Land use land cover (LULC) and its causes have been measured using remote sensing while mapping of a range of LULC and their variations in spatial and temporal scales were studied using Geographical Information System (GIS). A maximum likelihood classification (MLC) algorithm has been used to classify five land cover classes. The study shows that from 2001 to 2011 water body, forest cover and barren land were decreased whereas, agriculture land and built up area was increased by 21.38% and 53.6% respectively. In between 2011 to 2015, there has been a significant increase in water body which led to an increase in agricultural land. The rate of decrease in forest cover observed in all these years was almost the same. The built-up area doubled in the year 2015 as compared to 2011. It was found that during 2015 to 2018 water body was increased by 5%. But built up area got increased almost twice and the barren land was decreased by 7.25% whereas, the forest cover reduced to 84.25 km2 from 92.05 km2. Desirable policies for the sustainable development are necessary by adequately using the available resources to achieve proper Rurban planning. Restricting unnecessary construction, protecting the proper balance between natural and semi-natural land, harvesting rainwater, maintaining vertical expansion of built up, can be utilized to achieve sustainability. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.