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 National
Institutes of Technology (NITs) the entire
funding is managed by the center 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 Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs) the then Minister of
Human Resource Development Murali
Manoher Joshi decided to upgrade the
RECs to NITs. In 2003 all RECs were
upgraded to NITs and central government
took control to run these Institutes.[1]
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.[2]
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.[3]

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:

Region Places where RECs were planned

Eastern Region Durgapur and Jamshedpur

Western Region Nagpur, Surat 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 a college is
to be established in Delhi in order to take
over the degree courses in engineering
and technology at the Delhi College of
Engineering (DCE) now known as Delhi
Technological University(DTU) 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, J&K 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:[4]-
 Sl Places where RECs were Year
State
No. established established

Andhra Pradesh (now

1 Warangal 1959
Telangana)

2 Surathkal (Mangalore) Mysore (now Karnataka) 1960

3 Nagpur Maharashtra 1960

4 Bhopal Madhya Pradesh 1960

5 Jamshedpur Bihar (now Jharkhand) 1960

6 Srinagar Jammu and Kashmir 1960

7 Durgapur West Bengal 1960

8 Allahabad Uttar Pradesh 1961

9 Rourkela Orissa (now Odisha) 1961

10 Calicut Kerala 1961

11 Surat Gujarat 1962

12 Jaipur Rajasthan 1963

13 Kurukshetra Punjab (now Haryana) 1963

14 Tiruchirappalli Madras (now Tamil Nadu) 1964

15 Silchar Assam 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 5 respectively
owing to country's growing need for
quality manpower.

Sl No. Places where RECs were established State Year established

1 Hamirpur Himachal Pradesh 1986

2 Jalandhar Punjab 1987

Recent developments
Ministry of Human Resource Development
issued NIT status to three more colleges
which are located at

Year
Sl Name of the engineering Places where colleges Year
State converted
No. colleges were established established
to NIT

Bihar College of
1 Patna Bihar 1886 2002
Engineering

Government College of
2 Raipur Chhattisgarh 1956 2005
Mining & Metallurgy

Tripura Engineering
3 Agartala Tripura 1965 2006
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.

External links
 NIT Act 2007, NITs declared as Institutes
of National Importance,
http://nitcouncil.org.in/data/pdf/nit-
acts/act2007.pdf

References
1. "Technical Education | Government of
India, Ministry of Human Resource
Development" . mhrd.gov.in. Retrieved
2017-03-29.
2. "Council of NITs" . nitcouncil.org.in.
Retrieved 2017-03-29.
3. "Council of NITs" . nitcouncil.org.in.
Retrieved 2017-03-29.
 4. "Council of NITs" . nitcouncil.org.in.
Retrieved 2017-03-29.

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=History_of_Regional_Engineering_Colleges&ol
did=886175958"

Last edited 6 months ago by an ano…

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

otherwise noted.