Sammakka Sarakka Central Tribal University (SSCTU) is a central university in Mulugu district, Telangana, established by Parliament in 2023 through an amendment to the Central Universities Act, 2009. The university is named after Sammakka and Sarakka, the revered mother-and-daughter figures associated with the tribal history and cultural memory of the region. Its founding purpose is closely connected with expanding access to higher education, research and training for tribal communities while creating an institution that also serves wider academic and developmental needs. The university operates from a transit campus at Jakaram village near Mulugu while its permanent campus is developed on land allocated by the Telangana government. Official university material records an allocation of 335.04 acres for the institution. SSCTU began its first academic year in 2024–25 with two four-year undergraduate honours programmes: B.A. (Hons.) English and B.A. (Hons.) Economics. Those programmes continued into the next admission cycle through CUET-based selection. The university’s academic expansion has subsequently moved toward technology, quantitative fields and public policy, including programmes in computer science, data analytics, mathematics and computing, and public policy and governance. SSCTU has also entered academic collaboration with IIT Hyderabad for technical teaching support, reflecting a mentor-and-partnership approach during its formative phase. Because the university is still developing its permanent infrastructure, its institutional history is unusually visible in real time: legislation, land allocation, transit-campus operations, faculty recruitment and programme launches form the core of its early development. SSCTU’s identity combines central-university status with a specific tribal-development mandate, regional cultural significance and a growing multidisciplinary academic structure intended to connect humanities, social sciences, technology and public policy. The university’s early programme choices also show an effort to combine foundational humanities and social sciences with newer technology pathways, creating a broader academic base while retaining the tribal-development purpose for which the institution was created.