College of Home Science

The State Agricultural University owes its origin to the Punjab Agricultural University, which decided to set up a third campus of the University besides Ludhiana and Hisar in the erstwhile State of Punjab to cater to the needs of hill agriculture. The campus was established at Palampur in July 1966. Soon thereafter, the State was trifurcated merging the hills of Punjab with the UnionTerritory of the then Himachal. Although Himachal Pradesh could gain the State Agricultural University at Palampur by upgrading the hill campus into a full fledged University on lines with the emergence of Haryana Agricultural University. However, that was not to be. The campus was merged with newly established HimachalPradeshUniversity, Shimla. Since the educational system adopted at Palampur was on the Land Grant Pattern, which did not fit with the general University at Shimla, the campus was given a status of Agricultural Complex. This tentamounted to a mini-agricultural university within the general multifaculty university. The Solan campus which had been established as a part of PanjabUniversity, Chandigarh was merged with the Agricultural Complex till November 1978, when the Agricultural Complex was upgraded to a full-fledged StateAgriculturalUniversity with its headquarters at Palampur. Various technical teams of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) visiting the Agricultural complex and the University had suggested addition of more faculties to the existing agriculture in a phased manner. The genesis of the faculties of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry, Agricultural Engineering, Home Science, Fisheries, Basic Sciences took place when these departments were created. The ICAR treated these composite departments equivalent to respective colleges, when different schemes were sanctioned and operated. The first recommendation for the incorporation of Home Science Education emanated from the strong recommendations of the Adlakha Committee. After the University got established in 1978, a Department of Home Science was created in the College of Agriculture in February, 1980 at Palampur. The Department of Home Science established five well identified components in the Department, which were upgraded into constituent Departments of the College in May 1991, when the Department was given the status of a constituent college of the University.