National Institute of Technology, Calicut was set ...

National Institute of Technology, Calicut was set up in 1961 as Regional Engineering College Calicut (CREC), the ninth of its kind and the first one to be established during the Third Five-Year Plan period. Until the formation of Calicut University in 1963, the institute was affiliated with Kerala University. It was largely due to the efforts of Pattom Thanu Pillai, then Chief Minister of Kerala, that the institute came into being. Prof. S. Rajaraman, first principal of Government Engineering College, Thrissur was appointed as the special officer in 1961 to organise the activities of the college until M. V. Kesava Rao took charge as the first principal of the college. The classes were initially held at the Government Polytechnic at West Hill, before it moved to its present campus in 1963. The college started with an annual intake of 125 students for the undergraduate courses, on a campus of 120 hectares (1.2 km2).

Expansion Edit
The intake for the undergraduate courses was increased to 250 in 1966, 150 for the first year and 100 for the preparatory course. The annual intake was reduced from 250 to 200 from the year 1968 69 on account of industrial recession.

After Prof S. Unnikrishnan Pillai took charge as principal in 1983, the Training and Placement Department was started to organise campus recruitments for students. The college moved into the area of information technology in 1984 with the commissioning of multi-user PSI Omni system and HCL workhorse PCs. In 1987 the college celebrated 25 years of its existence, and postgraduate courses were started. The CEDTI was established on the campus the following year.

In 1990 Shankar Dayal Sharma inaugurated the Architecture Department Block and construction of a computer centre was completed. In 1996, the institute website (the first in Kerala) was launched. The Indian Institute of Management Calicut functioned from the NIT campus in its first few years of existence before moving to its new campus in Kunnamangalam in 2003.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, accorded NIT status to REC Calicut in June 2002 granting it academic and administrative autonomy. It was a lead institute under the World Bank-funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Program (TEQIP) which began in 2002. In 2003, students were first admitted to the flagship undergraduate B.Tech through the All India Engineering Entrance Exam. With the passing of the National Institutes of Technology Act in May 2007, NIT Calicut was declared an Institute of National Importance.[7] The National Institutes of Technology Act is the second legislation for technical education institutions after the Indian Institutes of Technology Act of 1961. In 2007 NIT Calicut raised its annual intake for its undergraduate program to 570.[8] The annual intake for undergraduate program was increased to 1049 by 2011.[9]