The Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IIT Gandhinagar or IITGN) is a public technical university and an Institution of National Importance (INI) established by the Government of India. It is an institution type, founded in 2008 as one of the eight new IITs announced by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The establishment was part of a strategic expansion of India's premier technical education framework to address the need for high-quality facilities for advanced work and research in science, engineering, and technology.
IIT Gandhinagar began operations in 2008 from a temporary campus in Ahmedabad, under the mentorship of IIT Bombay. It was formally incorporated into the legal framework of the existing IITs through the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 2012 (Act 34 of 2012), which amended the original Institutes of Technology Act, 1961. The 1961 Act grants the IITs their legal status, degree-granting powers, and governs their operation, declaring them as INIs.
The institute operates from a permanent, approximately 400-acre campus in Palaj, Gujarat, along the Sabarmati river. Its mechanism is characterized by a student-centric, holistic educational philosophy, which includes a mandatory 5-week undergraduate Foundation Programme. The curriculum emphasizes interdisciplinary learning, incorporating compulsory modules in design, life sciences, and the liberal arts, and offers extensive global exposure opportunities. The campus itself is notable for being India's first certified 5-star GRIHA LD (Green) campus. The Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 2012 was the most recent change that formally brought IIT Gandhinagar under the purview of the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961.