Born in Lahore (1882), Transplanted to Chandigarh (1947), Orphaned in 1966.....by KBS Sidhu 

Panjab University, Chandigarh: Neither Central nor State, Neither here nor there

It is not a Central University. It is not a State University. It is an inter-State body corporate — a designation that sounds distinguished but delivers nothing by way of stable legal identity, guaranteed funding, or unambiguous parentage. Panjab University, Chandigarh is, in the precise constitutional sense of the word, an orphan.

Prologue. Born in Lahore, Orphaned in Chandigarh

To understand what Panjab University is today, one must first understand what it was — and what was done to it.

The university was brought into existence on 14 October 1882, when Act No. XIX of the Imperial Legislative Council formally established and incorporated the University of the Punjab at Lahore. It was the fourth university founded by the British colonial authorities on the Indian subcontinent, and it grew, over the following six decades, into the pre-eminent institution of higher learning for the whole of undivided Punjab — a vast, polyglot, multi-faith region stretching from the Indus to the Yamuna, watered by five rivers and schooled in the confluent traditions of Persian, Sanskrit, and the vernacular Punjabi. At Lahore, the university was unmistakably at home.

Partition shattered that home without ceremony or compensation.

On the eve of August 1947, the Senate of the Punjab University at Lahore voted to divide its assets in a 60:40 ratio between the two successor states. The Partition Council did not endorse the decision. Pakistan did not honour even the interim arrangement of a joint functioning. And so the East Punjab Government, with no assets and no campus of its own, was compelled to promulgate an Ordinance on 27 September 1947 — nine weeks after independence — setting up the East Punjab University with effect from 1 October 1947. As one scholar of the university’s history has observed: there was no fanfare, there were no trumpets. The new institution inherited all the liabilities but none of the material assets of the parent university at Lahore. It was, from the first day of its Indian life, an institution born in dispossession.

For nearly a decade, the university had no campus of its own. Its administrative office was located at Solan in the Simla hills; its teaching departments were scattered across Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Amritsar, and Delhi. It was a university in name and in legal existence, but without a home, without walls, without the physical coherence that a serious institution of learning requires. In 1950, it was renamed Panjab University — the old spelling of the province restored, a gesture of continuity across the rupture of Partition.

Then, in 1956, it found a nest.

Chandigarh — the new capital that Le Corbusier was building on the plains at the foot of the Shivaliks — offered the university a campus in Sector 14, designed by Pierre Jeanneret in the same modernist spirit that governed the city. Red sandstone and open spaces. A campus worthy of the institution’s ambitions. For the first time since 1947, Panjab University had a home.

But barely a decade after it had settled, the Land of the Five Rivers was bifurcated again.

The Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, carved three successor entities out of the old undivided Punjab state: the new Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh. For most institutions, reorganisation meant relocation or redistribution. For Panjab University, it meant something constitutionally more complex. The university’s campus sat in Chandigarh, which was designated a Union Territory and shared capital of Punjab and Haryana. Its affiliated colleges were now spread across three separate States and a Union Territory. Its Senate drew representation from communities now living in distinct political jurisdictions with distinct governments, distinct legislatures, and divergent interests.

Section 72 of the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 addressed this complexity by constituting the university as an inter-State body corporate — a legal category that acknowledged the university’s multi-jurisdictional reach without resolving the question of who, ultimately, was responsible for it. Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and the Union were all notionally involved. In practice, Haryana withdrew its financial contribution by 1973, Himachal Pradesh followed, and the Centre — which had never formally claimed the university as its own — continued to fund it on an ad hoc basis while refusing to acknowledge it as a Central University.

The child who had survived Partition and wandered homeless through the hills for a decade, who had finally found a home in Chandigarh’s modernist campus, had now been rendered constitutionally parentless by the very Act of Parliament that purported to give it a new legal identity.

That is the origin of the orphanhood. Everything that follows — the funding crises, the litigation, the frozen grants, the competing claims — flows from that foundational act of constitutional irresolution in 1966.

I. The Litigation That Exposed a Deeper Malaise

Panjab University’s struggle for survival has not been fought only in classrooms, senate halls, or the court of public opinion. It has also been fought in the Punjab and Haryana High Court and, by extension, in the Supreme Court of India — where the university and its stakeholders sought judicial intervention to secure the release of grants from the University Grants Commission and the Union of India.

What began as a dispute over delayed or inadequate funding eventually exposed a deeper constitutional malaise: Panjab University is made to obey the regulatory authority of the Union and the UGC, but is denied the stable legal and financial status that ought to accompany that authority.

The immediate funding crisis became visible around 2015–17, though its roots lay earlier. In 2015, central grants were reportedly frozen following a complaint alleging financial irregularities in hostel funds, aggravating an already fragile financial position. Around the same time, the Ministry of Human Resource Development had to direct the UGC to release grants that had already been delayed for about nine months — demonstrating that Panjab University’s dependence on the Centre had become vulnerable to routine administrative disruption.

By 2016, the crisis had acquired a constitutional edge. Panjab University projected a requirement of approximately ₹277.72 crore and warned of a deficit exceeding ₹100 crore if additional support was not forthcoming. The Punjab and Haryana High Court took serious note and asked both the Union and Punjab why they could not increase their grant support in line with the university’s actual needs — especially when the Centre was already bearing the overwhelming share of the financial burden and Punjab’s contribution had remained stagnant.

II. The Illusion of the Six Per Cent Increase

This was not merely a matter of delay. It was equally a matter of the quantum of support.

The UGC had fixed Panjab University’s maintenance grant at roughly ₹176 crore in 2014, and thereafter the pattern was one of approximately 6% annual increase on that base. On paper, that sounded reasonable. In reality, a 6% increment on an inadequate base could not keep pace with salary revisions, pension liabilities, inflation, and infrastructure costs. The grant was effectively frozen in real terms even when nominal increases were shown.

The consequences of that freeze were documented with clinical precision in the university’s own submission to the Union Home Minister. Vice-Chancellor Prof. Arun Kumar Grover, in an Executive Summary filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court as part of the affidavit in CWP No. 18745 of 2016, recorded the position in terms that admitted no ambiguity:

“In 2015-16 UGC did not enhance its contribution from the previous figure of ₹176 crores. Whereas the annual maintenance deficit of PU had enhanced to ₹201.84 crores in 2015-16. This resulted in additional shortfall of ₹28.86 crores in 2015-16. PU now requires ₹277 crores in 2016-17 as compared to 176 crores sanctioned by UGC/MHRD in 2015-16 as well as in 2014-15 to offset the deficits of previous two financial years and balance the budget of this year.”

— Executive Summary on Panjab University and its Financial Needs, submitted to the Union Home Minister by Vice-Chancellor Prof. Arun Kumar Grover, September 2016

Two consecutive years of frozen grants against a rising deficit; the accumulated shortfall carried forward into a third year. This was not a funding gap. It was institutional haemorrhage, documented in the university’s own hand.

By 2019–20, the projected UGC/MHRD grant had risen to around ₹247 crore, reflecting this incremental pattern. By 2023–24, the annual UGC/Union grant stood at approximately ₹294.78 crore. In February 2024, the Centre approved an increase to ₹346.07 crore for 2024–25, with a further 6% annual increase promised for future years.

That increase brought temporary relief — but also confirmed the central point of the earlier litigation: the university had long been forced to live from crisis to crisis, waiting for executive grace rather than relying on a stable legal entitlement.

III. The ‘Resort’ Remark and the Supreme Court Intervention

The most dramatic judicial intervention came in early 2017, when the High Court ordered the UGC to release an additional ₹30 crore to tide over the immediate crisis. That figure is frequently misunderstood. It was not the total annual grant. It was an interim amount — over and above the normal flow — meant to prevent institutional collapse and ensure payment of salaries and essential expenses.

When the UGC did not comply fully and instead questioned the court’s direction, the Bench sharply observed that by applying such different yardsticks to Panjab University it might well “convert Panjab University into a resort.”

The remark was theatrical, but constitutionally telling. It captured the sense that the institution was being preserved as a shell while being denied the financial means to function as a serious university.

The UGC then approached the Supreme Court through a special leave petition against the High Court’s direction. This shifted the controversy from immediate distress to a larger question: how far can a High Court, under Article 226, direct the release of funds by a statutory regulator and the Union Government? Courts will intervene to prevent manifest arbitrariness or discrimination, but they are cautious about entering the domain of budgetary allocation. That explains why the High Court’s assertive phase was gradually moderated — even as the underlying grievance remained wholly unresolved.

IV. Punjab: Emotional Proprietorship Without Fiscal Commitment

If the Union’s role has been dominant, Punjab’s role has been ambivalent.

Historically, after Haryana and Himachal Pradesh ceased contributing in the 1970s, the maintenance deficit was to be shared broadly in a 60:40 ratio between the Centre and Punjab. But this formula was honoured only imperfectly. For years, Punjab’s annual contribution lingered at around ₹20 crore, later rising only to about ₹27 crore, while the Centre’s share continued to climb above ₹200 crore.

That is why the High Court, during the grant litigation, repeatedly asked why Punjab could not increase its support in proportion to the university’s actual needs. The question was politically awkward. Panjab University is regularly invoked in Punjab as a symbol of heritage, language, and regional identity — yet the State’s fiscal commitment has never matched that rhetoric.

Under pressure, Punjab later agreed to enhance its grant by 6% annually from 2018–19 onwards. These increases were reportedly given up to 2021–22, though one year saw only a 4.81% increase instead of the full 6%, and for 2022–23 the annual enhancement was not granted at all — forcing the university to formally seek reinstatement of the 6% formula. In revised estimates for 2022–23, the UGC grant was approximately ₹278 crore while Punjab’s contribution was about ₹41 crore.

There was, in effect, a freeze in Punjab’s contribution — both literally and structurally. Literally, because the amount remained stuck for years at low levels. Structurally, because even later increases did not restore any transparent or durable implementation of the supposed 60:40 sharing principle.

V. Haryana: Absent from the Balance Sheet, Present in Legal Memory

Haryana’s position is more intriguing still.

Panjab University was constituted as an inter-State body corporate under Section 72 of the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, involving Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and the Union. Yet Haryana stopped contributing financially after 1973. Since then, it has had no active budgetary share in the university.

But Haryana’s withdrawal was more political and administrative than juridically final. There appears to have been no formal statutory extinguishment of its stake. That is why, in recent years, Haryana has revived its claim — arguing that it retains a legitimate interest in Panjab University’s governance and benefits, particularly for colleges in Panchkula, Ambala, and Yamunanagar.

In 2017–18, Haryana indicated willingness to contribute around ₹25 crore annually, and at another stage offered to match Punjab’s contribution — provided it was granted affiliation rights for colleges in relevant districts and representation in bodies such as the Senate. In 2022, the Haryana Assembly unanimously passed a resolution seeking restoration of the State’s share in Panjab University and asserting that the issue should be taken up formally.

This puts Haryana in a constitutionally curious position. It has not paid for decades, yet it argues that it was never lawfully written out of the original arrangement. Punjab opposes any dilution of its own influence. The Union has encouraged both States to resolve the matter politically rather than through unilateral central action.

Haryana thus remains a dormant but not extinguished stakeholder: absent from the balance sheet, present in the legal memory of the institution.

VI. The Constitutional Doctrine: Control Without Accountability

The grant litigation makes sense only against the backdrop of Panjab University’s anomalous constitutional status.

It is not a conventional State University. Nor is it a Central University. It is an inter-State body corporate operating under a Parliamentary framework — yet without the clarity, security, or institutional coherence that such a framework should provide.

The constitutional doctrine is now settled on one side of the equation. Under Entry 66 of List I, Parliament has authority over the coordination and determination of standards in higher education, and the UGC acts within that domain. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence — from University of Delhi v. Ram Nath and Adhiyaman Educational and Research Institute v. State of Tamil Nadu onward — has consistently held that when UGC Regulations validly occupy the field of academic standards, State law must yield.

Gambhirdan K. Gadhvi v. State of Gujarat carried this logic into its most sensitive application: the appointment of Vice-Chancellors. The Court held that UGC Regulations on the composition of search committees and the eligibility criteria for Vice-Chancellors prevail over State statutes, because the Vice-Chancellor is not merely a functionary of State convenience but the academic head of an institution subject to national standards. The implication for Panjab University is direct. Its Vice-Chancellor, its faculty recruitment norms, its academic regulations — all fall within the gravitational pull of Entry 66. There is no special carve-out for an inter-State body corporate. The doctrine applies uniformly.

That means Panjab University cannot claim exemption from national norms in recruitment, academic qualifications, reservation frameworks, or governance standards merely because it is unique in origin. On all these matters, the centripetal force of Entry 66 applies fully.

Yet the financial corollary of that control has never been equally institutionalised.

• The Union insists on regulatory primacy but resists giving PU the settled status of a Central University.

• Punjab asserts emotional proprietorship but has historically under-contributed.

• Haryana invokes residual rights but carries no regular fiscal stake.

Power is centralised; responsibility is diffused. Regulation is enforceable; funding is negotiable. Standards are national; ownership is sentimental.

VII. The Orphan’s Predicament in Plain Terms

Let us be precise about what this means in practice.

A student enrolled in Panjab University is subject to UGC regulations on her academic programme. Her teachers were recruited on UGC-prescribed qualifications. Her fees are governed by norms that the UGC influences. The Vice-Chancellor’s appointment process is regulated by UGC guidelines — as the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed. In every functional sense, Panjab University operates as though it were a Central University.

But when the salary bill falls due, or the pension liability compounds, or the infrastructure requires urgent repair — the university cannot turn to the Centre as of right. It must petition. It must litigate. It must wait.

That is the orphan’s predicament. She is told what to do by a parent who will not acknowledge her. She is claimed sentimentally by another who will not support her. And she is pointed toward a third who says: talk to each other first.

VIII. The Two Honest Solutions

Panjab University’s problem cannot be resolved by one more interim grant or one more courtroom reprimand. The issue is structural, and structural problems require structural solutions. Two paths exist. Both are difficult. Both are honest. Everything else is deferral dressed as policy.

Option A: Full Central University Status

The first path is conversion to a Central University through Parliamentary amendment — a direct, unambiguous acknowledgement that what the State has already conceded in regulatory terms must now be conceded in financial and constitutional terms as well.

The political resistance to this option is well known and, in part, legitimate. Punjab fears the loss of regional influence over an institution it regards as a cultural anchor. There are anxieties about Punjabi as a medium of instruction being progressively marginalised in a nationally standardised framework. Faculty and staff unions worry about service conditions being restructured. Senate members fear reduced local representation. Alumni associations invoke history.

These concerns need not be dismissed. They should be addressed — in the statute itself.

A Parliament that was sophisticated enough to constitute Panjab University as an inter-State body corporate in 1966 is sophisticated enough to legislate a sui generis Central University that carries protective clauses. The enabling Act could, for instance, mandate that Punjabi shall remain a compulsory medium of instruction and examination at the undergraduate level; that a specified proportion of Senate and Syndicate seats shall be reserved for nominees of the Punjab Government and Punjab-domiciled academics; that no merger of affiliated colleges shall be effected without the consent of the Punjab Government; and that the institution’s name, character, and campus shall be preserved in perpetuity.

None of these protections are constitutionally novel. The Acts establishing Banaras Hindu University, Aligarh Muslim University, and Visva-Bharati each carry special provisions reflecting their founding character. Panjab University deserves no less. The argument that Central University status automatically erases regional identity is not a constitutional proposition — it is a political negotiating position, and it should be engaged as such.

What Central University status would deliver, on the other side of that negotiation, is transformative: a legally guaranteed annual grant, not subject to executive discretion or UGC caprice; the right to approach the Comptroller and Auditor General on equal terms with other Central institutions; immunity from the cycle of petition, litigation, and interim relief that has consumed institutional energy for decades; and the ability to recruit, plan, and invest with the confidence that comes from knowing the financial floor will not collapse beneath you.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court itself suggested this path. The Centre’s response — that there are no plans for conversion — is a political position, not a constitutional impossibility. Parliament can act when it chooses to.

Option B: A Justiciable Inter-Governmental Compact

The second path accepts that political realities may make full Central University conversion impossible in the near term, and seeks instead to repair the existing framework rather than replace it.

This would require a fresh inter-governmental agreement — not a loose memorandum of understanding of the kind that decorates filing cabinets and is forgotten at the next budget cycle, but a formal compact enacted as subordinate legislation under the Panjab University Act, 1947, or as a separate Parliamentary instrument, clearly specifying:

• The quantum of contribution by each party — Union, Punjab, and Haryana — expressed as a percentage of the university’s audited annual expenditure, not as a fixed nominal sum subject to incremental erosion;

• A revision mechanism tied to the Pay Commission cycle and the Consumer Price Index, so that the 6% fiction — a fixed percentage on an inadequate base — is permanently retired;

• Haryana’s formal re-entry as a contributing stakeholder, with defined affiliation rights for colleges in Panchkula, Ambala, and Yamunanagar in exchange for a regular fiscal commitment;

• A dispute resolution mechanism — perhaps a standing inter-State council or a designated bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court — so that funding disputes are resolved through an institutional process rather than through writ petitions filed in desperation;

• Consequences for non-compliance, including the right of the university to approach the Supreme Court under Article 131 if any party to the compact defaults on its obligations.

The critical word is justiciable. A compact that cannot be enforced is not a compact — it is a press release. The history of Panjab University’s funding is a graveyard of understandings that were never honoured: the 60:40 formula, Punjab’s 6% annual enhancement, Haryana’s promised contributions. Each was announced with gravity and abandoned without apology. The only remedy is to make non-compliance legally costly rather than merely politically embarrassing.

The Choice That Cannot Be Avoided

These two options are not symmetrical in ambition or in difficulty. Option A is structurally cleaner and financially more secure, but requires political will at the Centre and genuine negotiation with Punjab over the protective clauses. Option B is more immediately achievable but depends on continuing good faith among parties whose track record on good faith is, to put it charitably, uneven.

What neither option permits is the continuation of the status quo. The present arrangement — quasi-central in regulation, quasi-state in sentiment, fully orphaned in finance — is not a sustainable constitutional position. It is a prolonged act of institutional neglect, dignified by inertia and excused by complexity.

IX. Conclusion: The Phrase Is Apt

If UGC norms bind Panjab University as a matter of constitutional doctrine — and they do — then the Union and the participating States must also accept corresponding, rule-bound financial obligations. Otherwise, Panjab University will continue to inhabit a legal fiction: central enough to be controlled, but not central enough to be sustained.

Panjab University is not merely underfunded.

It is orphaned.

Its history gives it many claimants. Its constitutional present gives it none willing to assume full parental responsibility.

Until that responsibility is accepted — in law, not merely in sentiment — the university will remain what it is today: a distinguished institution condemned to survive on borrowed time, borrowed money, and borrowed grace.

June 23, 2026