Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture & Technology

Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology

गोविन्द बल्लभ पंत कृषि एवं प्रौद्योगिक विश्वविद्यालय
Motto	"ग्रामाभ्युद यादेत देशाभ्युदयः"
Motto in English	"The prosperity & development of our village is the prosperity of our nation"
Type	Public, land-grant
Established	17 November 1960
Chancellor	Governor of Uttarakhand
Vice-Chancellor	Dr. J. Kumar
Undergraduates	2800–3000
Postgraduates	500
Doctoral students	120
Location	Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India 28°58′N 79°25′E / 28.97°N 79.41°E / 28.97; 79.41
Campus	Rural
Acronym	GBPUAT
Affiliations	UGC, ICAR, AICTE
Website	www.gbpuat.ac.in

Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (Hindi: गोविन्द बल्लभ पंत कृषि एवं प्रौद्योगिक विश्वविद्यालय , पंतनगर) also known as GBPUA&T, Pantnagar University or Pantvarsity is the first agricultural university of India. It was inaugurated by Jawaharlal Nehru on 17 November 1960 as the "Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University" (UPAU). Later the name was changed to "Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology" in 1972 in memory of the first Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, statesman and Bharat Ratna recipient Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant. The University was declared as the best among all the other State Universities in India, in 1997. The University lies in the campus-town of Pantnagar in the district of Udham Singh Nagar in the state of Uttarakhand. The university is regarded as the harbinger of Green Revolution in India.

The first Education Commission of India (1949) headed by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan recommended setting up rural universities in India on American land-grant model.Uttar Pradesh (UP), under chief-ministership of Govind Ballabh Pant, took the first step and in 1954 invited an Indo- American team headed by Dr. K. R. Damle, the Vice-President of ICAR, to consider an area around Tarai State farm in erstwhile Nainital district as a possible site for a rural university. This area was actually a dense forest near Himalayan foothills and the government was using this area to rehabilitate Hindu, Sikh and other migrants from West Pakistan, in the aftermath of the partition of 1947. Encouraged by favourable view of the Damle team, two senior government officials- H S Sandhu and A N Jha visited United States to look for collaborations with US Universities. In consultation with University of Illinois dean Dr H W Hannah, the government of state of Uttar Pradesh presented a proposal to the Government of India in 1956 for establishing a Land-grant style university. Thereafter, a contract between the Government of India, the Technical Cooperation Mission and few US land grant universities, was signed to promote agricultural education in India. The US universities included the University of Tennessee, the Ohio State University, the Kansas State University, the University of Illinois, the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Missouri. The task of mentoring the proposed university in UP was assigned to the University of Illinois which signed a contract in 1959.