The National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are a group of public technical universities in India, recognised as Institutes of National Importance under the National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Act, 2007. The NITs are autonomous institutions funded by the Government of India through the Ministry of Education, and they collectively form one of the country's principal systems of higher education in engineering, technology, science, management and architecture.
| Key facts | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public technical universities |
| Status | Institutes of National Importance |
| Governing law | NIT Act, 2007 (amended 2012) |
| Ministry | Ministry of Education, Government of India |
| Apex body | NIT Council |
| Number of institutes | 31 |
| Common admission | Joint Entrance Examination (Main); seat allotment via JoSAA/CSAB |
| Predecessors | Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) |
Each NIT is an autonomous body with its own Board of Governors, Senate and Director, while broad policy coordination is provided by the NIT Council, chaired by the Union Minister of Education. The institutes offer undergraduate (B.Tech, B.Arch), postgraduate (M.Tech, M.Sc, MBA, MCA) and doctoral (Ph.D) programmes, and they conduct research across engineering disciplines, the basic sciences and management.
Most NITs evolved from the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), a network of seventeen institutions established in the late 1950s and 1960s as a joint venture between the Government of India and the respective state governments. The RECs were intended to provide regionally distributed, high-quality engineering education and to admit a balanced mix of students from the home state and from other states.
In 2002–2003, the Government of India upgraded the RECs to National Institutes of Technology, transferred them fully to central funding and granted them deemed-to-be-university status. The NIT Act of 2007 subsequently declared the institutes as Institutes of National Importance and provided a uniform statutory framework. The Act was amended in 2012 to include additional NITs created after 2007.
| Institute | Location | State / UT |
|---|---|---|
| NIT Agartala | Agartala | Tripura |
| NIT Andhra Pradesh | Tadepalligudem | Andhra Pradesh |
| NIT Arunachal Pradesh | Jote | Arunachal Pradesh |
| MNIT Allahabad (MNNIT) | Prayagraj | Uttar Pradesh |
| NIT Calicut | Kozhikode | Kerala |
| NIT Delhi | New Delhi | Delhi |
| NIT Durgapur | Durgapur | West Bengal |
| NIT Goa | Cuncolim | Goa |
| NIT Hamirpur | Hamirpur | Himachal Pradesh |
| MNIT Jaipur | Jaipur | Rajasthan |
| NIT Jalandhar (Dr B. R. Ambedkar NIT) | Jalandhar | Punjab |
| NIT Jamshedpur | Jamshedpur | Jharkhand |
| NIT Kurukshetra | Kurukshetra | Haryana |
| NIT Manipur | Imphal | Manipur |
| NIT Meghalaya | Shillong | Meghalaya |
| NIT Mizoram | Aizawl | Mizoram |
| NIT Nagaland | Dimapur | Nagaland |
| VNIT Nagpur | Nagpur | Maharashtra |
| NIT Patna | Patna | Bihar |
| NIT Puducherry | Karaikal | Puducherry |
| NIT Raipur | Raipur | Chhattisgarh |
| NIT Rourkela | Rourkela | Odisha |
| NIT Silchar | Silchar | Assam |
| NIT Sikkim | Ravangla | Sikkim |
| NIT Srinagar | Srinagar | Jammu and Kashmir |
| NIT Karnataka | Surathkal | Karnataka |
| NIT Tiruchirappalli | Tiruchirappalli | Tamil Nadu |
| NIT Uttarakhand | Srinagar (Garhwal) | Uttarakhand |
| NIT Warangal | Warangal | Telangana |
| SVNIT Surat | Surat | Gujarat |
| NIT Yupia | Yupia | Arunachal Pradesh region |
Undergraduate admission to the NITs is conducted on the basis of the Joint Entrance Examination (Main), administered by the National Testing Agency. Seat allotment is carried out centrally through the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) along with the Indian Institutes of Technology and other Centrally Funded Technical Institutions, with subsequent rounds handled by the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB). Postgraduate admissions are based on examinations such as GATE, CCMT, CCMN and JAM. NITs follow a partial home-state quota under the "Other State / Home State" admission policy.
The NIT system is headed by the NIT Council, which advises the central government on policy matters concerning the institutes. Each NIT is governed by a Board of Governors that includes nominees of the central and state governments and representatives of academia and industry. Academic affairs are managed by the Senate of each institute, headed by the Director.
The NITs, alongside the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), constitute the central tier of India's engineering education system. They are major contributors to India's pool of technically trained graduates, host research programmes funded by central science and technology agencies, and operate Technology Business Incubators and Centres of Excellence in association with industry and government.