PM-Internship scheme: Age cap, duration criteria likely to be eased

The government is keen to have around 100,000 interns in the pilot stage, sources said

internship, jobs — As an initiation to the PM Internship Scheme, a pilot project was approved with a budget of ₹840 crore in FY2024-25 | Photo: Shutterstock

Ruchika Chitravanshi New Delhi

2 min read Last Updated : Feb 09 2026 | 11:27 PM IST

To make the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS) attractive and accessible, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has given a note to the Expenditure Finance Committee on changes required in it, according to official sources. These changes include bringing down the age limit as well the duration of the internship.

The ministry wants to test the scheme, now in its run-through stage, with the proposed alterations before rolling it out in a full-fledged manner.

The government is keen to have around 100,000 interns in the pilot stage before putting it on the table, the sources said.

For the dry run, the pilot project was approved with an allocation of ₹840 crore in 2024-25. In 2025-26, as on December 31, 2025, ₹64.91 crore was utilised, according to a Parliament statement by Harsh Malhotra, minister of state for corporate affairs, on Monday.

This year’s Budget has given the scheme ₹4,800 crore.

Of the ₹10,831 crore allocated to the PMIS in FY26, the ministry, in its revised estimates, showed ₹541 crore was utilised.

Malhotra told the Lok Sabha the reasons for the low take-up included location, with most candidates indicating 5-10 km as the ideal distance. The minister said the internship period of 12 months was longer than that in normal skilling programmes.

The ministry is trying to address some of these concerns by tweaking the scheme’s terms.

As on January 27, 3,417 interns in the first round have completed the course. However, 7,094 candidates left without completing it, the Parliament response stated.

The PMIS was announced in the Budget of July 2024. It aims to provide internship to 10 million young people spaced over top 500 companies and five years. As an initiation to this scheme, the ministry launched a pilot project on October 3 last year, and the target was giving 125,000 internships in a year.

In the first round, applications were received from about 181,000 candidates. 82,000 offers to more than 60,000 candidates and more than 28,000 offers were accepted.

In the second round, over 214,000 applied. Partner companies made over 83,000 offers, of which more than 24,600 were accepted.