New Delhi, April 4: The university many in the country wanted to be closed down in the aftermath of the national-versus-anti-national debate has been marked third in the first-ever domestic ranking of educational institutions released by the Centre today.

Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, ranks behind Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. Just behind JNU is the University of Hyderabad, at fourth place, in the list prepared under the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) initiative of the Union human resource development ministry.

Both JNU and the University of Hyderabad have been through turbulent times in the past couple of months. JNU erupted over the February arrest of its students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges following an on-campus rally marking the anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament. The protests spurred calls from several in the BJP - among them Chandan Mitra, Subramanian Swamy and Yogi Adityanath - that the university should be closed down as it bred "anti-nationals".

University of Hyderabad is still simmering over the January suicide of Rohit Vemula, a PhD student, with fingers being pointed at the HRD ministry for having allegedly driven him to his death.

Kanhaiya scoffed at the ranking, calling it "ridiculous".

"Feels ridiculous that on one hand the ministry of human resource development is attacking us over autonomy and on the other hand we are on this list," the JNU students' union president was quoted as saying by NDTV.

About 3,500 institutions participated in the domestic ranking. They have been judged by their performance in the areas of teaching, research publication citation, students from other states, women students, economically backward students, placement, mean salary, peer rating, perception etc.

Tezpur University has figured among the top five universities, beating Delhi University. And in what comes as a surprise to many, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan (West Bengal), which has not been known for its academic excellence of late, figures 11th on the list.

The NIRF published the rankings in categories of general universities, engineering institutions, management institutions and pharmacy institutes.

IISc, a premier institute known for scientific and technological research, was assessed in the category of general universities. HRD ministry sources said that IISc, being a deemed university, had to compete with general universities even though it offers courses in engineering and sciences.

Two private deemed universities from Odisha - Shiksha 'O' Anusandhan and KIIT - were ranked at 26th and 53rd places respectively.

While no university from Jharkhand features among the top hundred, Central University of South Bihar is ranked 94.

Among engineering institutions, IITs dominated the top ten list. IIT-Madras was ranked the best followed by the ones in Mumbai, Kharagpur, Delhi, Kanpur and Roorkee.

Four IITs, which were set up in 2008-09, have beaten the National Institutes of Technology (NIT) to find place among the top ten. They are IIT-Hyderabad (7th), IIT-Gandhinagar (8th), IIT-Ropar (9th) and IIT-Patna (10th).

BIT-Mesra and NIT-Jamshedpur from Jharkhand have got 17th and 78th slots while IIT-Guwahati and NIT-Silchar were placed 11th and 65th, respectively. NIT-Rourkela and IIT-Bhubaneswar have got 19th and 26th ranks, respectively. NIT-Patna is at 87th place.

Among management institutions, IIM-Bangalore was ranked number one followed by IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Calcutta. XLRI-Jamshedpur has ranked 13th. Two other Jharkhand B-schools - BIT-Mesra and IIM-Ranchi - have got 25th and 28th positions, respectively.

Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal, has been judged the top pharmacy institution while University of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Chandigarh was ranked second and Jamia Hamdard, Delhi, bagged 3rd place. BIT-Mesra and Seemanata Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences from Odisha were placed at 7th and 49th slots respectively.

IIT Kanpur director Prof Indranil Manna appeared unconvinced by the results. "As public funded institutions, we are obliged to provide data for this ranking. We will analyse the data. We will see if we could not provide data properly," Manna said.