This building was gifted to the Uttar Pradesh Sanskrit Sansthan by a queen of Nepal, as she loved the language and wanted to contribute to it.
The campus dates back to 1971, when the sansthan was removed from its office in Royal Hotel, Lucknow. The then queen of Nepal, Shobha Devi Rana, had visited the sansthan and was impressed by its functioning. She decided to gift her house, a 22,000-sq ft property in New Hyderabad, situated on the banks of Gomti, to the sansthan for its office.
Uttar Pradesh Sanskrit Sansthan building
The then chairman of the sansthan, Pt Karunapati Tripathi, had refused to accept it as a gift and insisted that the sansthan buy this house from the queen. Shobha Rana agreed and a token price of Rs 11 lakh was fixed. But the state department of languages, under which the sansthan operates, refused to give any money. Tripathi finally gave the money to the queen from the savings of the Sansthan and also contributed an amount from his own pocket. The deal had a clause that the Kadamb tree and an old well in the house would never be removed and the building, which came under the ownership of the Sansthan, would only be used for promotion of the Sanskrit language. The Sansthan finally shifted to this campus in 1971.
All these years, the Sansthan authorities kept their promise and dedicated the premises to the language.
