Greetings!

Yes, your category does give you benefit in getting NIT/IIT

The way that system works is the software will check your first preference, if you are getting that college with your CRL, then well and good but if not, then it will go and check your category rank. Now if you are getting that preference with category rank, you will be allotted that, if not then it will move to second preference, and same process will be repeated.

The OBC-PwD candidate will have a very good advantage over general student( This is what it was designed for to level the playing field) for example the qualification percentage(in advance) for general was 17.5% whereas the same for OBC-PWD was 8.75% so you can see the difference and the benefit too

If you want to explore on which colleges you can get with your category rank you can use following predictor

https://engineering.careers360.com/jee-main-college-predictor?utm_source=qna&utm_medium=jee_cp

Thank you

~Sach