KISS declared deemed university

Bhubaneswar: Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) has been granted the university status by the Ministry of Human Resource Development vide a Letter No. F.9-14/2011-U-3 (A) dated 25/08/2017.
With this, KISS has become the first tribal university in India and in the entire world. Though Indira Gandhi National Tribal University was established before, it enrolled students of all categories. On the other hand, KISS University is exclusively for tribal students.
KISS has been declared a Deemed University under De-Novo category. The university will introduce seven new innovative departments in the first phase to provide impetus to research on tribal studies and help KISS achieve a place of prominence in the tribal education and research in world. As before, students of KISS University will get residential education absolutely free of cost.
Expressing his satisfaction, KISS founder Dr. Achyuta Samanta said this became possible because of the good wishes of people of Odisha. On behalf of KISS, he expressed his heartfelt gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chief minister Naveen Patnaik and Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar and Union Ministers from Odisha, Shri Jual Oram and Dharmendra Pradhan for their help and good wishes.
KISS was founded in 1992-93 in a rented building in Bhubaneswar with only 125 poor tribal students. It underwent massive growth with gradual increase in the student strength. At present, student strength of KISS has touched 37,000 (27,000 existing students and 10,000 graduated). Sixty percent of them are girl students.
In addition to formal education from Class I to postgraduate level, a wide range of vocational skill is imparted to the students.