The National Institute of Technology is a public technical research university that was established in the year 1964 by the Government of India. It's being one of the national institutes of technology that are established by the Government of India. Right now, the management is running an autonomous institute that offers co-education to the students. Prof. P.S. Manisundaram, a pioneering educationist in India, founded the college. He attended Loyola College in Chennai and the Technical University of Nova Scotia (now Dalhousie University) in Canada. From its inception in 1964 to 1982, he was the Principal of REC Tiruchirappalli. 

Under the permission of the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the Government of India, the college was granted Deemed University status in 2003 and renamed National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli. The Institute of National Importance is recognized by the Government of India as an Institute of National Importance under the National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research (NITSER) Act of 2007, and is one of the members of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) system, a group of premier Indian technical institutes governed by the Council of NITSER.