National Institutes of Technology

The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are centrally funded technical institutes under the ownership of the Ministry of Education, Government of India. They are governed by the National Institutes of Technology, Science Education, and Research Act, 2007, which declared them institutions of national importance and laid down their powers, duties, and framework for governance. The act lists 32 NITs Including IIESTS. Each NIT is autonomous and linked to the others through a common council known as the Council of NITSER, which oversees their administration. All NITs are funded by the Government of India.

In 2020, National Institutional Ranking Framework ranked twenty four NITs in the top 200 in engineering category. The language of instruction is English at all these institutes. As of 2024, the total number of seats for undergraduate programmes is 24,229 and the total number of seats for postgraduate programmes is 11,428.

During the second five-year plan (1956–60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. The Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) were established by the central government to mimic the IITs at a regional level and act as benchmarks for the other colleges in that state. The admission used to be highly selective. Students topping the respective state's 12th board exam could be admitted at the REC of their state. Thus, 17 RECs were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. The government opened 9 RECs in 1960, 2 on average in each region, as follows:

Later on, 6 more were added by 1967. The early 15 institutes were Srinagar, Warangal, Calicut, Durgapur, Kurukshetra, Jamshedpur, Jaipur, Nagpur, Rourkela, Surathkal, Surat, Tiruchirappalli, Bhopal, Allahabad, and Silchar. It established 2 more, one in Hamirpur in 1986, and another in Jalandhar in 1987.

These were large-sized institutions judged by the standards then prevailing in the country. The considerations that weighed in this decision were:

A large-sized college would be more efficient than the equivalent small colleges, the proposed colleges have to meet the additional requirements of the country as a whole and for that purpose should have to function on an all-India basis. Therefore, the smaller they are in number and the larger in size, the better, and for the same reason their location is important from an all-India point of view.

The RECs were jointly operated by the central government and the concerned state government. Non-recurring expenditures and expenditures for post-graduate courses during the REC period were borne by the central government while recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses was shared equally by central and state governments. They were considered to be the best government engineering colleges after the IITs in India even before their upgrade to National Institutes of Technology.

The success of the technology-based industry led to high demand for technical and scientific education. Due to the enormous costs and infrastructure involved in creating globally respected Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), in 2002 Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Minister Murli Manohar Joshi decided to upgrade RECs to "National Institutes of Technology" (NITs) instead of creating IITs. The central government controls NITs and provides all funding. In 2002, all RECs became NITs.