NIRF Rankings 2025 Highlights: India’s best institutes – IIT Madras secures top rank, IIM-Ahmedabad, AIIMS Delhi, NALSAR

The NIRF 2025 engineering rankings highlight the dominance of the IITs, with 9 IITs, including IIT Roorkee, in the list. Southern institutions such as IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, and NIT Tiruchirappalli continue to strengthen their presence among India’s best engineering colleges.

For the eighth consecutive year, the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, secured the top spot in the ‘Best-Performing Law Colleges’ category of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). The Ministry of Education today announced the list of top institutes today.

Like last year, NLSIU Bangalore is followed by National Law University (Delhi) and NALSAR University of Law (Hyderabad) at the second and third positions. The fourth spot has been secured by Kolkata’s West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences,  while Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar, stands at fifth place in the rankings.

Congratulating the Institute on its performance, Prof. M.P. Gupta, Director, IIM Lucknow, said, “IIM Lucknow’s performance in the NIRF 2025 Rankings highlights our ongoing commitment to academic excellence and societal impact. This recognition reflects the dedication of our faculty, students, staff, and alumni in building a dynamic learning environment. IIM Lucknow sees this achievement as a stepping stone toward even greater goals. Our focus remains on advancing high-quality research, fostering industry collaboration, enhancing student experience, and deepening global engagement. We are committed to strengthening IIM Lucknow’s role as a leading institution that not only contributes to management education in India but also resonates on the world stage.”

Here are the top 10 institutes from the NIRF 2025 Innovation Rankings:

Here are the top institutes listed under the NIRF 2025 Skill University Rankings:

- Symbiosis Skills and Professional University (formerly Symbiosis Skill and Open University), Pune, Maharashtra

- Symbiosis University of Applied Sciences, Indore, Madhya Pradesh

- Shri Vishwakarma Skill University, Palwal, Haryana

1. Jadavpur University, West Bengal

2. Anna University, Tamil Nadu

3. Panjab University, Chandigarh

4. Andhra University, Andhra Pradesh

5. Kerala University, Kerala

6. Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kerala

7. Osmania University, Telangana

8. University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir

9. Gauhati University, Assam

10. Bharathiar University, Tamil Nadu

11. Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala

12. University of Madras, Tamil Nadu

13. Gauhati University, Assam

14. University of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir

15. Delhi Technological University, Delhi

16. Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu

17. Alagappa University, Tamil Nadu

18. Mumbai University, Maharashtra

19. Mysore University, Karnataka

20. Acharya Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh

21. Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi

22. Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka

23. University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir

24. Bangalore University, Karnataka

25. Periyar University, Tamil Nadu

26. Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamil Nadu

27. King George's Medical University, Uttar Pradesh

28. Dibrugarh University, Assam

29. Gujarat University, Gujarat

30. Shivaji University, Maharashtra

31. Utkal University, Odisha

32. Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, Uttarakhand

33. Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Chhattisgarh

34. Vikram University, Madhya Pradesh

35. Sardar Patel University, Gujarat

36. North-Eastern Hill University, Meghalaya

37. Ranchi University, Jharkhand

38. Tripura University, Tripura

39. Barkatullah University, Madhya Pradesh

40. Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Gujarat

41. Maharshi Dayanand University, Haryana

42. Jai Narain Vyas University, Rajasthan

43. Bundelkhand University, Uttar Pradesh

44. Dr. Harisingh Gour University, Madhya Pradesh

45. Bilaspur University, Chhattisgarh

46. Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab

47. Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Uttar Pradesh

48. Kurukshetra University, Haryana

49. Kalyani University, West Bengal

50. Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University, Maharashtra

Reacting to this achievement, Prof. Uma Kanjilal, Vice-Chancellor, IGNOU, expressed her gratitude to all members of the IGNOU fraternity. “This milestone has been made possible by the dedicated efforts of our faculty, academic, and non-academic staff. At IGNOU, our mission remains clear — to provide affordable, quality education to everyone, everywhere. Going forward, we will strengthen our focus on leveraging digital and technological tools to ensure ease of accessibility, even in the remotest parts of the country. We will continue to expand the use of vernacular languages, multimedia, video-based resources, and blended learning approaches so that education reaches learners in the most inclusive and learner-friendly manner.”

Congratulating the students, faculty, alumni and non-teaching staff for their hard work, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “Being a topper consistently is a result of a collective, cohesive and focused team effort. Thanking the Almighty for blessing us with such a wonderful team. Together, we pledge to put in our best efforts towards Viksit Bharat@2047.”

Continuing its winning streak, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has grabbed the number one position in the engineering category, followed by IIT-Delhi and IIT-Bombay, respectively. IIT Hyderabad claimed the seventh spot, ahead of IIT Guwahati at eighth. NIT Tiruchirappalli (Trichy) is the only NIT to feature in the top 10 this year, ranked ninth, while IIT (BHU) Varanasi rounded off the list at tenth position.

The rankings highlight the continued dominance of the IITs in technical education, with NIT Trichy standing out as the only non-IIT institution to break into the elite list.

This year’s rankings have been released across 17 categories – overall, SDGs institutes, universities, colleges, research institutions, engineering, management, pharmacy, medical, dental, law, architecture and planning, agriculture and allied sectors, open universities, skill universities, and state public universities.

The overall category was led by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, followed by the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, and IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee, AIIMS Delhi, JNU and BHU.

In last year’s rankings, different domains had their specific leaders. For engineering, IIT Madras held the top spot; in medical disciplines, AIIMS New Delhi and similar institutions were distinguished; B-schools saw IIM Ahmedabad leading, and in the universities category, IISc Bengaluru featured prominently.

Institutions are evaluated on groups of parameters including Teaching, Learning and Resources; Research and Professional Practice; Graduation Outcome; Outreach and Inclusivity; Perception. This is the tenth edition of the rankings, ranking around 7692 institutions, up from 2426 institutions in the first edition.

Institutions are ranked in a total of 17 categories this year, up from 16 last year. Apart from the overall ranking and rankings of universities and colleges, engineering, medical, dental, law, and management institutions, the new category this year is for sustainable development goals.  This evaluates institutions on the basis of their ‘green’ practices.

Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, National Board of Accreditation, said that the retraction of research papers has been a challenge, and this time, negative marking has been introduced for retracted papers for the first time. 

The IITs, along with AIIMS Delhi, JNU, and IISc Bangalore, have traditionally dominated the top 10 ranks in the Ministry of Education’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).

Among Universities, IISc Bangalore retained its top spot for the tenth year in a row. Since the first edition of these rankings in 2016, IISc Bangalore has bagged the top rank in this category each year. JNU ranked second, retaining its rank from last year. Delhi University ranked fifth this year, climbing up from sixth last year.