Institutions · Gulbarga
Aiwan-e-Shahi Road, Kalaburagi · Founded 1960
The oldest law college in the whole of the Hyderabad–Karnataka region, and the first degree college established by the HKE Society. It was built on a gift from Ramesh Chandra Lahoti in memory of his father — and it has since sent an alumnus to the Supreme Court of India and another to the Union Cabinet.
The Lahoti Contribution
After the reorganisation of states in 1956, the Hyderabad–Karnataka region was left conspicuously short of higher education. The Hyderabad Karnataka Education Society was formed in 1958 to answer that, built on contributions from the farmers and businessmen of the area.
Two gifts made the law college possible. Mohammad Mahboob Yakub Maniyar donated the land. Ramesh Chandra Lahoti, a noted industrialist of the area, gave a generous sum to start the college — on the understanding that it would carry the name of his late father, Seth Shankarlal Lahoti, the family’s Gulbarga patriarch.
The family gave the money and the name, and then stepped back. The college has been run by the HKE Society ever since.
That is the pattern across almost everything on this list: endow it, name it for someone worth remembering, and hand it to a local body that will keep it running long after the donor is gone. The college opened in 1960 as the Society’s very first degree college — the foundation on which more than fifty institutions have since been built.
The Building
The foundation stone was laid by V. V. Giri, later the fourth President of India. The present college building was inaugurated on 24 February 1968 by Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, then Speaker of the Lok Sabha and himself later President of India.
Two future heads of state at a single small college in a region the rest of the country had largely overlooked. It is a measure of how much the founding of the college mattered locally, and of what the HKE Society was attempting in those years.
Foundation Stone
Laid the foundation stone of the college. He would go on to serve as the fourth President of India.
24 February 1968
Inaugurated the present college building as Speaker of the Lok Sabha; later the sixth President of India.
Est. 1958
Formed to lift a region left behind by the 1956 reorganisation. The law college was its first degree college; more than fifty institutions have followed.
Alumni & Today
Justice Shivaraj V. Patil studied here and rose to become a Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and afterwards Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission. Mallikarjun Kharge, later a Union Minister and among the most senior figures in Indian public life, is also an alumnus.
That is a striking return on a single donation made in a small Deccan city in 1960 — and the clearest possible argument for the kind of philanthropy the family practised. The gift was modest and local. Its consequences were neither.
The college today runs the three-year LL.B. and the five-year integrated B.A. LL.B., with a combined intake of around 120, affiliated to Karnataka State Law University at Hubballi and recognised by the Bar Council of India. It has a moot court hall, library, hostel and sports facilities.
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Twenty Institutions
Every institution the family endowed across five regions of the former Hyderabad State.
All institutions →The Gulbarga Branch
The patriarch whose name the college carries, and the son who paid for it.
The people →1960
Where this founding sits in the family’s 165 years in the Deccan.
The timeline →