State universities are run by the state government of each of the states and territories of India and are usually established by a local legislative assembly act., the UGC lists 411 state universities. The oldest establishment date listed by the UGC is 1857, shared by the University of Calcutta, the University of Madras and the University of Mumbai. Most State Universities are affiliating universities administering many affiliated colleges that typically offer a range of undergraduate courses, but may also offer post-graduate courses. More established colleges may even offer PhD programs in some departments with the approval of the affiliating university.
Private universities are approved by the UGC. They can grant degrees but they are not allowed to have off-campus affiliated colleges., the UGC list of private universities lists 282 universities.
These four types of universities total 821 universities together. There are universities of some kind in each of the 28 states of India as well as three of the union territories: Chandigarh, Delhi and Puducherry. The state with the most universities is Rajasthan with 76 universities, and Rajasthan has also by far the most private universities, 46 in number. Tamil Nadu is the state with the most deemed universities, numbering 28 and Uttar Pradesh has the most state universities, 29. Uttar Pradesh also has six central universities, the largest number of all the states and territories. Apart from the above universities, other institutions are granted the permission to autonomously award degrees. However, they do not affiliate colleges and are not officially called "universities" but "autonomous organizations" or "autonomous institutes". They fall under the administrative control of the Department of Higher Education. These organisations include the Indian Institutes of Information Technology, Indian Institutes of Technology, the National Institutes of Technology, the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, the Indian Institutes of Management and other autonomous institutes. These institutes are not listed below. Also not listed are institutes which are under the control of the professional councils, without an approval of the UGC, e.g. Agricultural Universities, which are under the control of the Agricultural Education Division of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, one of the professional councils. The University Grants Commission has also released the list of 24 fake Universities operating in India. UGC has said that these 24 self-styled, unrecognised institutions functioning in contravention of the UGC Act have been declared as fake and are not entitled to confer any degrees.
