The New Education Policy of 1986 had recognized the need for a statutory Body at the National level responsible for overseeing the growth and quality of Technical Education in the country. Accordingly the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) was established by an Act of Parliament (AICTE Act No. 52 of 1987) in 1987. As a part of its programmes and activities, the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) was set up by the AICTE in September 1994, for the purpose of assessment of Quality and Accreditation of Technical programmes in India.

The NBA is also concerned with assessing and assuring the quality of the various constituent elements of the Technical Institutions, such as academic ambience, infrastructure, financial resources, physical resources, human resources, supporting systems like library resources, computational resources, and avenues to mould and develop the students’ personality and learning characteristics.

Accreditation is a process of quality assurance, whereby a programme in an AICTE approved institution is critically appraised to verify that the Institution or the progamme meets the criteria and guidelines prescribed by NBA. Further, accreditation provides quality assurance that the academic aims and objectives of the institution are known to be honestly pursued and effectively achieved by the resources currently available, and that the institution has demonstrated capabilities to ensure effectiveness of the educational programme(s), over the validity period of accreditation.

The NBA accords accreditation to the programmes, and not to the institution as a whole. Furthermore, the programmes under consideration are graded into three categories viz., Accredited for five years, Accredited for three years and Not Accredited (NA), depending upon the marks they achieve on a 1000-points scale. This is especially important for promoting a healthy competition for quality achievement among the different programmes of the same institution, as well as among similar programmes in different institutions.

The need and demand for accreditation of technical education programmes in India has arisen because of the explosive growth in the number and the variety of educational institutions programmes since the decade of the nineties. Though the technical education continues to be available only to small percent of students, it is not possible to meaningfully sustain the present growth rate without a parallel exercise in quality assessment of the programmes. Such an exercise will ensure that the institution indeed has, and is likely to continue to have in the near future, the necessary instruments and resources, for the programmes to deliver technical manpower that not only meets the local industry requirements, but is also an acceptable human resource for the global job market in the Engineering and Technology sectors.