Center for Theoretical Physics

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

Motto	योगः कर्मसु कौशलम्(Sanskrit) যোগঃ কর্মসু কৌশলম্(Bengali) (Yogaḥ Karmasu Kauśalam)
Motto in English	Excellence in Action is Yoga
Type	Public engineering school
Established	1951
Chairman	Srikumar Banerjee
Director	Partha Pratim Chakraborty
Deputy Director	Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya
Academic staff	470
Administrative staff	2403
Students	12100
Undergraduates	6500
Postgraduates	5600
Location	Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
Campus	2,100 acres (8.5 km2)
Website	iitkgp.ac.in

The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur or IIT KGP) is a public engineering institution established by the government of India in 1951. It is the first of the IITs to be established, and is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India.

As part of Nehru's dream for a free self-sufficient India, the institute was established to train scientists and engineers after India attained independence in 1947. It shares its organisational structure and undergraduate admission process with sister IITs. IIT Kharagpur has a 8.5 square kilometres (2,100 acres) campus is residence to about 22,000 inhabitants. The students and alumni of IIT Kharagpur are informally referred to as KGPians. IIT Kharagpur holds two festivals: Spring Fest (Social and Cultural Festival) and Kshitij (Techno-Management Festival).

With the help of Bidhan Chandra Roy (chief minister of West Bengal), Indian educationalists Humayun Kabir and Jogendra Singh formed a committee in 1946 to consider the creation of higher technical institutions "for post-war industrial development of India". This was followed by the creation of a 22-member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar. In its interim report, the Sarkar Committee recommended the establishment of higher technical institutions in India, along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and consulting from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign along with affiliated secondary institutions. The report urged that work should start with the speedy establishment of major institutions in the four-quarters of the country with the ones in the east and the west to be set up immediately.