Honourable President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Honourable Governor of the States of Punjab and Haryana and the Administrator of Union Territory Chandigarh, Prof. Kaptan Singh Solanki ji, Honourable Chief Minister of Punjab and Fellow, P.U., Shri Parkash Singh Badal ji, Honourable Chief Minister of Haryana, Shri Manohar Lal ji, Internationally acclaimed Agriculture Scientist, Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Nobel Laureate Shri Kailash Satyarthi ji, Fields Medallist Prof. Manjul Bhargava, very Iconic person Shri Gulzar ji, distinguished Clinician and Medical Scientist Dr. Amod Gupta, present and past members of P.U. Senate, my predecessor Vice Chancellors of PU, invited Guests, Graduating students, Ph.D degree holders, my teaching Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, I consider it a rare honour and blessings of destiny to have an opportunity to welcome all of you to an Annual Convocation of my alma mater where President of India is the Chief Guest. Only three of my eleven predecessors have had the privilege of having President of India as the Chief Guest at PU Convocations.

          The last occasion when this happened was in 2007, the 125^th year of PU since its inception at Lahore in 1882. During that year, PU enunciated for itself a Vision 2020 and commenced a phase of expansion of the physical infrastructure and academic agenda, on the premise that frontiers of research in contemporary times require knowledge in more than one specialization. The University opened many new inter disciplinary Centres in Emerging Areas of Science and Technology as well as Social Sciences.

          Our University stands put today along with the premier most Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in the same 276-300 bracket in Times Higher Education Rankings, as the two best academic institutions in India. However, all of you are aware, that worldwide rankings of two institutions do not meet the national aspirations as both these are far from being counted amongst the top hundred institutions worldwide.

          Honourable President of India in a webcast to the nation last year through the National Knowledge Network had exhorted all of us to attempt to cross the barrier of first 200 institutions, in progress towards March to top hundred bracket.

          My colleagues at PU have taken this challenge seriously. University, Beijing, i.e., PUB, today is placed amongst top 50 institutions worldwide. We reckon that PUB was like many of our own Indian institutions at the turn of 20^th century. The difference between PUB and PUC, i.e., Panjab University Chandigarh would not have been much 15 years ago. The commencement of integrated Masters and Ph.D. programmes in the form of Graduate Schools in Inter-disciplinary areas and the synergy with national laboratories and national centre in and around PUB campus have propelled it to its present position. Taking cue from PUB, PUC has taken initiative to get together 20 institutions in and around Chandigarh on a platform of Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster.

          Panjab University has a unique status of Inter-State Body Corporate in India, it is not a Central University but it receives financial assistance from MHRD and UGC via a special arrangement. If the Government of India would continue to provide financial support to fill up the vacant teaching positions in PU, as well as accept to meet the inflationary cost to sustain and maintain our physical infrastructure, we can emerge to cross the barrier of 200 rank worldwide in next few years. I trust that we shall fulfill this during the presidentship of Shri Pranab Mukherjee.

          To conclude, I convey my congratulations to all those who are going to be honoured today with Honoris Causa Degrees, Distinguished Awards, Ph.D degrees, Masters’ and Bachelor Degrees and the prestigious Medals of the University.

        Thanking you