Which one of the following is a deemed to be university?

Concept: In India every institution that awards degrees belongs to a statutory category, and the category is fixed by the legal instrument through which that institution acquires university status. A Central University acquires that status from an Act of Parliament; a State University from an Act of a State Legislature; a Private University from a State Act moved on the proposal of a sponsoring body. A deemed to be university acquires it from none of these. It is an institution already working at a high academic standard, whatever its own origin, which the Central Government, acting on the advice of the University Grants Commission, declares to be deemed a university by notification under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956. The test is therefore not the institution's size, age or reputation, and not how the institution was first founded, but the instrument that confers university status on it: a Section 3 notification rather than a legislative Act.

Application: trace the instrument from which each institution named in this question draws its university status.

• The institution listed here as Gandhigram Rural University, Madurai is officially The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), situated at Gandhigram in the Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu, near Madurai; the paper uses the older name-and-city style. It began as a Gandhian rural-reconstruction institute and draws its university status from a Central Government notification issued under Section 3 of the UGC Act in 1976, which it still holds.

• Periyar University, Salem draws its university status from an Act of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly passed in 1997.

• Nagaland University, Kohima draws its university status from the Nagaland University Act, 1989, an Act of Parliament.

• Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Bilaspur drew its status from a State Act in 1983 and, since the Central Universities Act, 2009, which is again an Act of Parliament, draws it from a Central Act.

Cross-check: three of the four institutions draw their university status from a legislative Act, one from an Act of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly and two from Acts of Parliament, so none of them can carry the deemed to be university label however well known they are. Only one institution in the list obtains university status through an executive notification under Section 3 instead.

Hence the deemed to be university among the institutions listed is Gandhigram Rural University, Madurai, that is, the Gandhigram Rural Institute.