A SAU is usually a university established by an act of state legislature with a dedicated mandate of teaching, research and extension in agriculture and related disciplines.
The state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) took the first step for establishing an agricultural university in 1954, when it invited an Indo American team headed by Dr K R Damle, the Vice-President of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), to consider an area around Tarai State farm in Nainital district as a possible site for a rural university.
[3] Encouraged by the favourable view of the Damle team, senior UP government officials H S Sandhu and A N Jha visited the United States to look for collaborations with US universities.
Since the initial SAUs were established with technical cooperation from United States land-grant universities, their academic programmes are strongly influenced by the American system and present a departure from the academic system prevailing in other general universities in India.
Since their inception, SAUs have followed a trimester or a semester system with credit-based, continuous evaluation on a 5-point or 10-point GPA scale.
Most of these deemed universities are sponsored by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and have small academic programmes as compared to SAUs.
Notwithstanding the limited power of the Indian Parliament for legislating on subjects of state list such as agriculture (including agricultural research and education), there are certain provisions in the Constitution of India which allows it to legislate on these matters in certain conditions, such as when the Rajya Sabha passes a resolution to this effect by two-thirds majority (Article 249) or when legislatures of two or more states pass a resolution to do so (Article 252) or to implement decisions taken in international conferences (Article 253).
The Central Agricultural University at Imphal, Manipur was incorporated by an act of Parliament (No.4 of 1992) and caters to many states in Northeast India.
[10][11] Chief Minister of Orissa has demanded setting up a CAU in Kalahandi Balangir Koraput Region.