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. Today, all these 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 showed 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 Murli Manohar 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.

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:
Sl No. Places where RECs were establishedStateYear established1WarangalAndhra Pradesh (now Telangana)19592Surathkal (Mangalore)Mysore (now Karnataka)19603NagpurMaharashtra19604BhopalMadhya Pradesh19605JamshedpurBihar (now Jharkhand)19606SrinagarJammu and Kashmir19607DurgapurWest Bengal19608AllahabadUttar Pradesh19619RourkelaOrissa (now Odisha)196110CalicutKerala196111SuratGujarat196212JaipurRajasthan196313KurukshetraPunjab (now Haryana)196314TiruchirappalliMadras (now Tamil Nadu)196415SilcharAssam1967
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 establishedStateYear established1HamirpurHimachal Pradesh19862JalandharPunjab1987