MANIT was started in 1960 as Maulana Azad College of Technology (MACT), named after the first
Minister of Education of India,
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. MACT started functioning in 1960 at Govt S.V. Polytechnic with an intake of 120 students and seven faculty members. It was one of the first out of eight
Regional Engineering Colleges started during the
second five-year plan (1956–1960) in India, where the main focus was development of the
public sector and rapid industrialisation. To ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand of rapid industrialisation, a decision was taken to start the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), one in each major state of India to churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus a total of seventeen RECs were established 1959 onwards, one in each major state of India. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. MACT was one of the first eight REC's to be established in each region in India. It was established in the Western Region along with
Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur and
Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat. It started operating in the premises of "Swami Vivekananda Polytechnic" Bhopal. Mr. S. R. Beedkar, Principal of Swami Vivekananda Polytechnic was appointed as the planning officer of the institute. The foundation stone of the Institute building was laid by the then Prime Minister of India
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on 23 April 1961. The Institute gradually progressed to become a high level education center with steady development of infrastructure as well as academics. J. N. Moudgill became the first principal of MACT in 1962. Five years degree programs in
Civil Engineering,
Mechanical Engineering and
Electrical Engineering were started in 1962 itself. In 1963, the five-year program of
Bachelor of Architecture was started as well. In 1964, the institute was shifted to its own building which is its present campus. As the necessity of science and technology kept on growing, more undergraduate programs kept on getting added like:
Electronics and Communications Engineering in 1972;
Computer Science and Engineering in 1986; 3-year
Master of Computer Applications (MCA) in 1988 and
Information Technology in 2001 (which was later merged with "Computer Science and Engineering" in 2013). The success of technology-based industry led to high demand for technical and scientific education. During the
Premiership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then
Minister of Human Resource Development,
Murli Manohar Joshi decided to upgrade all "Regional Engineering Colleges" to "National Institutes of Technology" that shall be funded by the Central Government itself. Hence, in 2002, all REC's became NIT's and MACT became Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT). In the same year, MANIT was granted
deemed university status. With this advancement, the
World Bank assisted "Technical Education Quality Improvement Program" started in 2003, for the rapid academic and infrastructural growth of the college. In addition to engineering programs, an
MBA program as well commenced from 2006. The
Government of India in 2007 passed the
NIT Act as per which MANIT was declared an
Institute of National Importance. == Campus ==