Which one of the following statements is not correct about the University…

Concept: Any statutory body is fixed by three things — the Act that brings it into being, the mandate that Act assigns to it, and the financing arrangement that the same Act lays down. For a grant-giving commission created by Parliament to fund universities, the statute itself constitutes a Fund of the Commission, credited with the sums the Central Government pays it out of moneys provided by Parliament, and out of that Fund the Commission disburses grants outward to universities. A claim about such a body is therefore tested by asking which of those three it touches and then checking it against the statute — and, where the claim is about money, by checking whether the payment it describes runs in the direction the statute actually provides for.

Application: Applying those three tests to the University Grants Commission, one claim at a time:

• Creation — the University Grants Commission Act, 1956 (Act No. 3 of 1956) was passed by Parliament, and the Commission was formally constituted as a statutory body on 3 November 1956. It had already been working since 1953, but without statutory status until that Act.

• Mandate — Section 12 of that Act charges the Commission with the promotion and co-ordination of university education and with the determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in universities.

• Central finance — the Commission is funded by grants voted in the Union Budget under the education ministry. Until the Plan / Non-Plan classification of government expenditure was discontinued from 2017-18, those grants reached the Commission in exactly those two heads.

• State finance — a State university is maintained out of the budget of the State that established it. That expenditure is voted by the State legislature and paid directly to the university; no State Government routes money into the Commission on account of its universities. The Commission, in turn, pays development grants to eligible universities out of the central funds it receives.

Cross-check: Track the direction of the money. Into the Commission: only from the Union Budget. Out of the Commission: grants to universities, central and State alike. Nothing in that flow runs from a State treasury into the Commission — a State's higher-education outlay sits in the State budget, not in the Commission's receipts.

Therefore the statement that the Commission receives funds from State Governments in respect of State universities is the one that is not correct about the UGC.