MGIT Hosts Internal Hackathon for Smart India Hackathon 2026; 990 Students Compete, 50 Teams Advance to the National Round

News Date : 13 Sep 2026     News Report

Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Technology (Autonomous), Gandipet, conducted its Internal Hackathon for Smart India Hackathon 2026 on Friday, 12 September 2026, on the college campus. A total of 990 students in 165 teams took part, making it one of the largest single-day student innovation events the institute has hosted.

Smart India Hackathon is an initiative of the Innovation Cell of the Ministry of Education, Government of India, in association with AICTE. Every participating institute conducts an internal round and nominates its strongest teams to the national edition. SIH 2026, the ninth edition, was launched on 21 August 2026 by Prof. Yogesh Singh, Chairman, AICTE.

Teams at MGIT attempted 95 of the 240 problem statements published on the SIH portal — close to forty per cent of the national list — across 19 themes in both the hardware and software editions. The statements came from more than fifty organisations, among them ISRO, DRDO, the National Technical Research Organisation, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Ministry of Ayush, Bharat Electronics Limited, Qualcomm and the Governments of Maharashtra and Jharkhand.

Evaluation ran through the day across 30 laboratories in the CSE, IT, ET and ECE departments. Thirty jury members worked in thirteen panels, each pairing faculty of the institute with an external expert drawn from industry, so that every team defended its idea before both an academic and an industry assessor. Teams were scored out of 100 on five parameters — proposed solution, technical approach, feasibility and viability, impact and benefits, and research and references.

Participation across every year

Participation spanned all four years of study, with 121 first-year students, 411 in the second year, 370 in the third and 88 in the final year. Of the 990 participants, 458 were women — 46.3 per cent — and every one of the 165 teams included at least one female member, meeting the SIH requirement in full. Teams were drawn from eleven branches of engineering, and a large number were formed across two or more branches.

Fifty teams move forward

Fifty teams have been nominated to represent the institute at the national round — 45 shortlisted and 5 on the waiting list, comprising 40 from the software edition and 10 from the hardware edition, across 13 themes. Smart Automation accounted for the largest share with 11 nominated teams, followed by Blockchain and Cybersecurity with 8 and Agriculture, FoodTech and Rural Development with 7.

The hackathon was held under the guidance of Dr. G. ChandraMohan Reddy, Principal, and Dr. K. Sudhakar Reddy, Vice Principal. Dr. T. V. Rajini Kanth, Professor and Head, Computer Science and Engineering, was the Convenor, with the Heads of the participating departments as Co-Convenors and Dr. P. Shyam Sunder, Assistant Professor, CSE, as the Institute SPOC. Seventeen faculty coordinators and a student coordinator in every laboratory managed the arrangements through the day.

The institute congratulates all participants and the nominated teams, who will now be mentored by faculty ahead of the national round of Smart India Hackathon 2026.