History of Regional Engineering Colleges

During the second five-year plan (1956–60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. To ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand for these projects, a decision was taken to start the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), at the rate of one per each major state, which can churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus, seventeen 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. All the 20 institutes now offer degree courses at various bachelors, masters and doctorate levels in various branches of engineering and technology. The entire non-recurring expenditure and expenditure for post-graduate courses during the REC times were borne by the central government. As regards in the REC system the entire recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses, the same was shared by the central government and the state government on 50:50 basis. However, after becoming NITs the entire funding is managed by the centre now. REC system served well but as time passed some state governments shown lack of responsibility to take them in right direction. Following the long-standing demand for more IITs the then MHRD Minister Murali Manoher Joshi decided to upgrade the RECs to National Institute Of Technology(NIT).In 2003 all RECs were upgraded to NITs and central government took control to run these Institutes.

Objective behind the birth

A large number of industrial projects were contemplated for the 2nd Five-Year Plan period (1956–61). In order to ensure the supply of trained personnel to man these projects, the Planning Commission, in September 1955 appointed an Engineering Personnel Committee (EPC), to undertake an overall assessment of the demand and supply position in respect of engineering personnel-graduates and diploma-holders-during the 2nd Plan period and to recommend the extent to which facilities for technical education should be expanded. The EPC has estimated that by 1960-61, there would be a large gap in the supply position and the shortage will be of the order of 1,800 engineering graduates and 8,000 diploma-holders. For fulfilling the recommendations of the EPC, a scheme was formulated for :

Expansion of the then existing 19, engineering colleges and 50 polytechnics and
The establishment of 3 new engineering colleges and 23 polytechnics.

The Government of India decided to implement the first part of the EPC recommendations in 1957. As regards the establishment of the new institutions, it was decided that the matter should be re- examined in the light of the following considerations :

New institutions, both for degree and diploma courses should be spread more evenly to ensure progressively equal opportunities for training all over the country.
In planning the capacity for training courses both in the existing and the new institutions, the requirements of future five-year plans should also be kept in view.

The Central Government also decided that the new institutions to be established, after a review of the whole matter, should start at least with 5 with effect from the academic year 1958.

In order to decide the number of engineering colleges that should be started on the initiative of the Central Government, a statistical and integrated approach on the basis of the nature and scope of the future 5-year plans was called for. However, at that stage these details were not available. Nevertheless, expansion of technical education facilities to the extent possible, could not be delayed since institutions had to be established and courses organized well in advance of the initiation of the development projects. The problem was one of keeping a distant situation in mind and plan for technical education in stages.

With this end in view, it was decided that during the 2nd Plan period, facilities for first degree courses may be extended to about 11,000 seats from the then estimated figure of 9,000 places that would be available by the end of the 2nd Plan period. The extra 2,000 places were sought to be created in establishing 8 new engineering colleges, each with an annual admission of 250 students.

Aims and Objectives

The foregoing historical narrative shows that the original aim of the decision to establish RECs. was to create institutional facilities for providing under-graduate education and training in different branches of engineering, with a view to supplying the engineering manpower for the industrial projects and development envisaged under the successive Five-Year Plans. The common objectives were :

To impart instruction in different branches of engineering
To maintain high standard in education and training and
To promote co- operation with industry and other technical institutions.

Considering the background, intentions and later developments, the aims and objectives of the RECs, can be stated as follows :-

To offer courses of instruction in different branches of engineering, mainly at the under-graduate level, to start with, in the overall perspective of general education with a view to developing an integrated personality.
To make the instruction and training oriented towards creating in the students an awareness of and meeting the technological and socio-economic needs of the country.
To promote research effort among various faculties, preferably on inter-disciplinary projects and undertake post- graduate instruction and training, keeping in view the needs of technology.
To promote co-operation with industry and other sectors of economy logical growth and taking special note of the requirements of Regional Development.
To maintain an all India character in regard to student admissions and requirement of faculty of high quality.
To act as an important link in the interaction between the Central and State sectors of technical education.

The Regional Engineering Colleges

These are 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 as in (2) their location is important from an all-India point of view.

It was decided that the 8 new colleges should be established two in each region, as follows:

            Eastern Region                - Durgapur and Jamshedpur.
            Western Region                - Nagpur and Bhopal.
            Southern Region               - Hyderabad and Mangalore.
            Northern Region               - Delhi and Allahabad.

Later, however, the college proposed for Hyderabad was established in Warangal. It was initially the intention that the college to be established in Delhi was to take over the degree courses in engineering and technology at the Delhi College of Engineering now the Delhi Technological University and that the college should be developed only for degree courses both on full- time and part-time basis. However, the college at Delhi became a separate entity by itself and in its place, the Regional Engineering College at Srinagar in the Northern Region was established. Thus, the 8 Regional Engineering Colleges in the first phase, came to be established.

Central Engineering Colleges

Thus, 15 Regional Engineering Colleges were established one in each of the major States. The dates and places in the various States where they were established are as follows :-

Andhra Pradesh Warangal 1959
Mysore (now Karnataka) Surathkal(Mangalore) 1960
Maharashtra Nagpur 1960
Madhya Pradesh Bhopal 1960
West Bengal Durgapur 1960
Bihar (now Jharkhand) Jamshedpur 1960
Jammu & Kashmir Srinagar 1960
Uttar Pradesh Allahabad 1961
Orissa Rourkela 1961
Kerala Kozhikode(Calicut) 1961
Gujarat Surat 1962
Rajasthan Jaipur 1963
Punjab (Haryana) Kurukshetra 1963
Madras (Tamil Nadu) Tiruchirapalli 1964
Assam Silchar 1967

The colleges were intended to have all-India character and to serve the whole country for providing technical personnel required for the successive five-year plans. In view of the following aims and objectives, it was recommended that the Regional Engineering Colleges should appropriately be renamed as Central Engineering Colleges. The all-India character was to be ensured, by each college admitting students from all the other States and appointing the best available teaching staff, on an all-India basis.

Two more were later established in the states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh at Jalandhar and Hamirpur respectively owing to country's growing need for quality manpower.

Himachal Pradesh Hamirpur 1986
Punjab Jalandhar 1987

Recent developments

MHRD issued NIT status to three more colleges which are located at

Bihar Patna 1886

Bihar College of Engineering - India's 6th oldest engineering College.

Chhattisgarh Raipur 1956

Government Engineering College

Tripura Agartala

Tripura Engineering College
These were done to provide an NIT to every new state carved out of its parent state whose NIT was lost as a result of the bifurcation. The 11th 5-year Plan envisages establishing 10 more NITs, bringing the current total of NITs to 30. Thus more than one NIT per state will become a reality. Based on the request of respective state government and feasibility, future NITs shall be either converted from the existing government institutes or can be set up as brand-new (Greenfield) NIT. The 21st (and the first brand-new) NIT is coming up at Imphal in the north-eastern state of Manipur at an initial cost of Rs. 500 crores. However no place for the location has been finalized yet.

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