Jubilant Foodworks, Maruti Suzuki take the lead in PM Internship Scheme

Jubilant Foodworks Limited, Maruti Suzuki, ONGC, Reliance Industries and Eicher Motors have emerged as the top five companies to provide internship opportunities under the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS), according to the Standing Committee report on demands for grants by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) tabled on Wednesday. 

 

The parliamentary panel, while taking note of the issues facing the scheme such as mismatch between the number of internship opportunities offered and actual participation, imbalanced gender ratio of interns and under utilisation of funds by the scheme has directed MCA to take prompt corrective actions and mass outreach programmes.

 

In the first round of the scheme’s pilot project, more than 1.27 lakh internship opportunities were provided and 1.15 lakh in the second round.

 

Starting December 2024, around 8,700 interns have joined from more than 28,000 candidates who have accepted the offers so far, the report said. Around 72 per cent of the total interns were males and 28 per cent females. 

 

Location is an important consideration and ideal travel distance is between five and 10 kilometres, MCA told the committee on the feedback it had gathered on the scheme.  

 

The maximum interns who have joined the scheme are from Uttar Pradesh (1,234), followed by Assam (994), Bihar (715) and Madhya Pradesh (693). 

 

Longer duration of internships, lack of alignment between candidates' interests and the roles offered was also among the reasons cited by the MCA for the low acceptance of the scheme, besides the request for bringing down the age criteria for applicants from ITIs and Polytechnic. 

 

The ministry informed the committee that it is carrying out concurrent evaluation of the scheme, through a feedback survey being conducted by Indian Institute of Management- Bangalore, Delhi School of Economics, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management and the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs. 

 

The parliamentary panel has recommended that the MCA should encourage all states to set up a dedicated agency to provide a focused approach to implementation and monitoring the scheme to create employable skilled youth across the country. 

 

The number of companies participating in the pilot project of PMIS has gone up from 280 in the first round to 318 in the second round.

 

The committee noted that in the financial year 2024-25, the BE of ₹ 2,000 crore towards the scheme was reduced to ₹380 crore in RE while the actual amount spent as of mid-February, 2025 was ₹21.10 crore.

 

In the FY 2025-26, the allocation for the internship scheme has been increased to ₹10,831.07 crore.

 

“While appreciating the ministry for taking all efforts to achieve the ambitious target of the scheme; the committee urges the ministry to act swiftly and decisively to overcome and address the key challenges faced during pilot phase,” the panel recommended. 

 

The PMIS was announced in the Budget 2024-25. It aims to provide internship opportunities to one crore youth in top 500 companies in five years. MCA had launched the scheme as a pilot project on October 3, 2024, with a target to provide 1,25,000 internship opportunities to the youth in the financial year 2024-25.