NIT Act

National Institutes of Technology Act, 2007
Enacted by	Parliament of India
Status: In force

The National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Act, 2007 was enacted by the Parliament of India to declare India's National Institutes of Technology as Institutes of National Importance. The Act received the assent of the President of India on 5 June 2007 and became effective on Independence Day, 2007. The National Institutes of Technology Act is the second law for technical education institutions after the Indian Institutes of Technology Act of 1961.IIESTs have also been proposed to be covered under this act as two separate schedules until a host of other IIESTs do not come into existence, for the time being.

National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are federally funded technical institutes in India, with a campus in each major Indian state. This Act declares them as institutions of national importance, along the lines of the IITs and makes them eligible for a larger amount of funding and support from the Indian Government. The Act also aims at unifying the organisational structure of the NITs and bringing them under the direct purview of the Ministry of Human Resource Department. These institutions were previously governed by individual societies under the Societies Registration Act, 1860.

The 17 Regional Engineering Colleges were established in the major states of India as a cooperative venture between the central and respective state governments. In 2002, the Indian government decided to upgrade all Regional Engineering Colleges ("RECs") to NITs and later raised a few other reputed government colleges in subsequent years (for instance, Patna, Raipur and Agartala) to NIT status.

After the upgrade NITs were completely under central government control. The Institutes provided potential choice for the government to replicate the IIT system and the Indian government decided to give these Institutes more autonomous powers.

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