The second pilot of the PM Internship Scheme (PMIS) will be starting from August 1 with a target of 700,000 internships in FY26, a six-fold increase as compared to FY25 target, an official source told FE. The launch of the second pilot comes in the background of a delay in the hiring of interns during the first.
First Pilot Faced Execution Challenges
The official said that many companies could not meet the 45-day deadline to hire interns in the first pilot. “The registration for the pilot project closed on April 22, yet the candidates are still joining the companies. We will know the final data once the process gets over,” the official said.
He added that the average monthly stipend offered to the interns who were recruited in the first pilot is around Rs 15,000 — three times the government-mandated amount of Rs 5,000, with some candidates being offered as high as Rs 40,000-45,000 a month. “These are top-league companies who already have their own internship programmes. The salaries offered under PMIS are benchmarked against these existing programmes. The recruitments are happening for both white and blue-collar roles,” the official said.
Tweaks and Integration to Boost Outcomes
Besides, the companies are offering a higher stipend because many experts believe that the stipend outlined in the scheme is inadequate to draw the right candidates. “In many cases, the candidates are offered meals and accommodation in addition to the one-time grant of Rs 6,000 which is coming from the government to manage relocation expenses, etc,” the official said.
In the first round of the pilot project, only around 8,000 candidates joined companies out of the total FY25 target of 125,000. The official said that the second round is likely to see a higher number of joinings due to the tweaks in the scheme, and greater engagement between companies and candidates over the past few months. More than 300 companies have offered nearly 90,000 internships in the second round of the first pilot project.
“It’s a mammoth task for companies to hire so many interns. The participating companies will have to do interviews, background checks, ensure that the Aadhaar-seeding of their bank accounts is done, and handle other internal compliances following which the offer letters are being given,” the official said.
Early this month, FE had reported that the government is mulling merging the newly-launched employment-linked incentive (ELI) scheme with PMIS to achieve optimum efficacy of the two in boosting job creation.
Officials from the corporate affairs ministry, which is spearheading PMIS, and the ministry of labour and employment, which will drive the ELI scheme, had a meeting to discuss the possibility of combining both the schemes.
Under PMIS, the goal is to provide 10 million young individuals with internship opportunities in top 500 companies over the next five years, allowing them to learn real-life skills in actual business environments.