Background: The provision of graded accreditation and autonomy of colleges has been made in the national education policy (NEP) 2020 which will be applicable for all types of higher education institutions in the country. The authors have noticed that there are very few diploma engineering programmes having accreditation and that too will expire for the majority of the programmes in June 2022.

Purpose: To ascertain the awareness of faculty members on the accreditation process was the main purpose of the study. Apart from it, reasons for a very low number of programme accreditation were inferred and suggestions are made for the national board of accreditation (NBA), state government and polytechnics to improve and innovate the quality of diploma engineering programmes to satisfy the future needs of students, employers and society and implement the provisions of NEP 2020.

Method: A descriptive research study was undertaken using the structured and semi-structured instrument designed by the researchers. The responses were collected from 525 principals, heads of departments and faculty members of the polytechnics of the country using Google Form.

Results: It is found that on 95 parameters of the accreditation process the cumulative weighted mean level of awareness of faculty members is more than 60 percent. That clearly indicates that teachers are having in-depth awareness ofthe requirements of the accreditation process but they are achieving the minimum expectable level on various pre-qualifiers, criteria and sub-criteria because of various reasons.

Conclusions: There is a number of other reasons which are abstracting the polytechnic and programmes to qualify for the accreditation. These reasons should be identified and addressed using well-designed quality improvement and innovation interventions at state, polytechnic and faculty members levels.