Indian Institutes of Technology

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are a network of autonomous public engineering and technology institutions in India. Established in 1950, they are under the purview of the Ministry of Education of the Government of India and are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961. The Act designates them as Institutes of National Importance and lays down their powers, duties, and governance framework as the country's premier institutions in the field of technology. There are currently 23 IITs functioning under this act. Each IIT operates autonomously and is linked to the others through a common council called the IIT Council, which oversees their administration. The Minister of Education (India) serves as the ex officio chairperson of the IIT Council.

In the late 1940s, a 22-member committee, headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, recommended the establishment of these institutions in various parts of India, along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with affiliated secondary institutions.

The first Indian Institute of Technology was founded in May 1950 at the site of the Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur, West Bengal. The name "Indian Institute of Technology" was adopted before the formal inauguration of the institute on 18 August 1951 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

On 15 September 1956, the Parliament of India passed the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act, declaring it as an Institute of National Importance. Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, in the first convocation address of IIT Kharagpur in 1956, said:

Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing India's urges, India's future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolically of the changes coming to India.

On the recommendations of the Sarkar Committee, four campuses were established at Bombay (1958), Madras (1959), Kanpur (1959), and Delhi (1961). The locations of these campuses were chosen to be scattered throughout India to prevent regional imbalance. The Indian Institutes of Technology Act was amended to reflect the addition of new IITs.

In the tenth meeting of IIT Council in 1972, it was also proposed to convert the then IT-BHU into an IIT and a committee was appointed by IIT Council for the purpose but because of political reasons, the desired conversion could not be achieved then. IT-BHU had been taking admissions through Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) for undergraduate courses and Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for postgraduate courses since 1972. Finally, in 2012 the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University was made a member of the IITs and renamed as IIT (BHU) Varanasi.

Student agitations in the state of Assam made Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi promise the creation of a new IIT in Assam. This led to the establishment of a sixth institution at Guwahati under the Assam Accord in 1994.