# Kirori Mal College

Kirori Mal College is a constituent college of the University of Delhi. Established in 1954, it is located in the heart of North Campus of the university in New Delhi, and offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the sciences, humanities and commerce. The National Assessment and Accreditation Council accredited it with a CGPA of 3.54 (A++) in 2023, which is the third highest among all Delhi University colleges. According to NIRF records, it had spent more than 300 Crores in 2021 for infrastructure development and salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff.

## History

The college began as Nirmala College and was located on Delhi Road. Faced with problems relating to the staff in the period following the partition, the management of the college changed hands and the trust founded by Seth Kirori Mal took over. It shifted to its present campus on 1 February 1954. The foundation stones of the college were laid down by the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad in the summer of 1955. The campus infrastructure was designed by the famous architect duo Anand Apte and CSH Jhabvala.
The first principal of the college was Ch. Hardwari Lal (1954–57). Kirori Mal College began its first full-fledged functioning from the academic session 1956–57. He was followed by Sarup Singh (1957–65) who later became the Professor-and-Head, Department of English, University of Delhi and then the Vice-Chancellor, DU, followed by becoming the Lt. Governor, Delhi and then the Governor of Gujarat.
Kirori Mal College was one of the few institutions of the University of Delhi selected for sports training during the Commonwealth Games in 2010 which led to new facilities being created in the form of a new building and a gymnasium to facilitate sports and other activities.

## Departments

* Department of Bengali
* Department of Botany
* Department of Chemistry
* Department of Commerce
* Department of Computer Science
* Department of Economics
* Department of English
* Department of Geography
* Department of Hindi
* Department of History
* Department of Mathematics
* Department of Philosophy
* Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences
* Department of Physics
* Department of Political Science
* Department of Sanskrit
* Department of Urdu
* Department of Statistics
* Department of Zoology

## Hostel

The college hostel is situated next to the sports complex of the college. Its 89 rooms house around 170 undergraduate and postgraduate students from both India and abroad. Hostel seats are allocated to various courses and admission is made on the basis of merit.

## Rankings

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council accredited it with a CGPA of 3.54 (
A++) in 2016, which is the third highest among all Delhi University colleges. The college was ranked 18th among colleges in India by the NIRF, Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2019 and 19th in 2020. Kirori Mal College was ranked 9th among colleges in India according to the latest NIRF rankings by Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2024.

## Notable alumni

Kirori Mal College has a large alumni base. Notable members include:

### Actors, directors and singers

* Krishnakumar Kunnath - Playback Singer
* Amitabh Bachchan - actor
* Abhishek Banerjee (actor)
* Habib Faisal - Screenwriter and Director
* Satish Kaushik - actor, director
* Ravi Baswani - film actor
* Siddharth Narayan - actor
* Prashant Narayanan - actor
* Sanam Puri - singer
* Shakti Kapoor - actor and comedian
* Vijay Raaz - film actor
* Divyendu Sharma - actor
* Sushant Singh - film and television actor
* Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub - actor
* Ali Abbas Zafar - director
* Vijay Krishna Acharya - screenwriter and director
* Kabir Khan - director
* Sargun Mehta - television actress
* Sonam Sherpa musician Parikrama
* Geetika Vidya Ohlyan - Actress

### Politicians

* Naveen Patnaik - former Chief Minister of Odisha and the chief of Biju Janata Dal, a regional political party in Odisha. He is a writer and has published 3 books.
* Madanlal Khurana - former Chief Minister of Delhi.
* Rangarajan Kumaramangalam -politician.
* Girija Prasad Koirala - former Prime Minister of Nepal.
* Pravesh Verma, Delhi politician.

### Others

* Padmavathy Bandopadhyay - first woman Air Marshal of Indian Air Force
* Habib Faisal - Hindi screenwriter and director
* Aditya Ghosh - Businessman who worked in aviation and hospitality
* Gaurav Bidhuri - boxer who won medal at World Championship
* Yogesh Kathuniya - Paralympic Athlete - Discus throw
* Vaibhav Singh Yadav - World Boxing Council(WBC) Asia & Asian Boxing Federation(ABF) Titles Champion
* M.S. Kohli - Indian mountaineer
* Massoud Khalili
* M. S. Krishnan -Chair of Business Information Technology at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business
* Abhay Kumar - poet, artist and diplomat
* Sanjivan Lal - film maker
* Harbans Mukhia - Indian historian
* Saeed Naqvi - journalist
* Parikrama - band
* Raghuvendra Singh Rathore
* Rajshekhar -Indian lyricist
* Himanshu Sharma - Bollywood screenwriter
* Mrityunjay Kumar Singh
* Dinesh Thakur - theatre director
* Mirza Waheed - Writer
* Arjun Dev- Writer, Educationist and Historian, he co-wrote some of the extremely popular NCERT books

### Notable faculty

* Hiren Gohain
* Krishna Kumar
* Sarup Singh (ex-VC, University of Delhi and former Governor of Kerala and Gujarat )