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JUST ABOUT 8,000 candidates have taken up offers in the pilot project of the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme till the middle of January, sources involved in the process said. The pilot phase was launched in October, while the scheme itself was announced in the Union Budget for 2024-25 last July.
Of the 1.27 lakh internship opportunities listed by 280 companies in the first phase, partner companies made 82,077 internship offers to 60,866 candidates. Of these, 28,141 candidates accepted offers to join the internship as on January 29, 2025, according to a Lok Sabha reply by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs on February 3.
Sources told The Indian Express that only about 8,000 candidates have joined the internship programme in the first phase.
“This is probably because they were not ready to go to the location offered for the internship,” said the source.
The second round of the scheme started less than a month ago — on January 9. Partner companies are posting new as well as editing unfilled internship opportunities.
To improve the acceptability of the scheme, sources said the government is now planning to give details of the company, the internship opportunity and the exact location (along with geotagging) so that candidates know a priori how far they have to travel. Earlier, such details were not provided upfront to candidates. These changes may be introduced in the next phase of the scheme. Earlier, these details were kept anonymous, with only the internship’s description made visible to the candidate, without specifying the company’s name at the application stage.
Further, the age limit is also likely to be relaxed (at present, youth in the 21-24 age group are eligible) at both ends. Further around 49 companies from sectors such as hospitality, tourism, healthcare have also been added to the list as they were considered to be labour intensive.
Among the 280 companies offering internships under the scheme are Reliance Industries, TCS, HDFC Bank, and also unlisted entities including luxury auto makers like Mercedes-Benz.
Explaining why few youth have joined the programme, when unemployment is a big issue, a person involved in the process said, “A lot of youngsters who are applying are not eligible. They are still studying or overage. So those things are being looked at, whether the changes should be made accordingly in the scheme. Even the portal is developing and details such as geolocation, company name, and detailed internship description will be added to the portal at the time of application itself.”
To get a clearer picture of the on-ground status of the scheme, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which is the nodal ministry for the scheme, is also learnt to have asked for an updated dataset from the companies. Each company involved in the scheme has been asked to provide details about the number of youngsters engaged in the scheme, the number of offers made, the accepted offers by candidates, and the number of joinees in each company, sources said.
The criteria for education and age might also get tweaked as most candidates termed to be ineligible were either overage or were currently studying in an educational institution. Youth applicants aged 21-24 years who have passed high school, higher secondary school, have a certificate from an ITI, hold a diploma from a polytechnic institute, or are graduates with degrees such as B.A., B. Sc., B. Com, BCA, BBA, B.Pharma are eligible to apply under the scheme. Reservation structure is also provided to be the same as government jobs for SCs, STs, OBCs and disabled in the internship scheme.
The scheme aims to provide internships to one crore youth in top 500 companies over five years. Under the scheme, an amount of Rs 4,500 will be provided per month by the Government of India through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) with an additional Rs 500 offset to be provided by the company’s CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds. The government will also provide a one-time grant of Rs 6,000 per annum for incidentals to cover miscellaneous expenses incurred by the selected candidate during the internship.
The internship scheme was a part of the Prime Minister’s Package for Employment and Skilling announced in FY25 Budget with an overall outlay of Rs 2 lakh crore. The package was allocated Rs 12,000 crore for this financial year, out of which Rs 10,000 crore was allocated to the Ministry of Labour and Employment for the three Employment Linked-Incentive schemes and Rs 2,000 crore was provided to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for the internship programme.
In the revised estimates for 2024-25, the amount allocated for the internship scheme was scaled down to Rs 380 crore. For 2025-26, an amount of Rs 10,831 crore has been provided for the internship scheme in the Budget, including Rs 59.77 crore of capital outlay.
