 "Nirmala Sitharaman, Nirmala")
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman would launch the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS) app on Monday, a move which will make it easier for youngsters to apply for the programme, sources said.
The FM will also launch the first facilitation centre for the Internship Scheme being set up in Kolkata by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The centre is meant to provide assistance and guidance to the youth regarding the scheme, official sources said.
The CII will also set facilitation desks at its 47 Model Career Centres across the country.
The app has been developed by Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG), a national agency by the Gujarat government, sources said.
BISAG is also managing the internship portal at present.
“Youth may have greater access to mobile phones than computers and accessing the internship scheme might be easier on the former. A mobile app can help them register and apply easily,” the source said.
In the ongoing second round of the PMIS Pilot Project more than 1,18,000 internship opportunities have been posted by the partner companies across the country, according to a Lok Sabha statement.
“Ministry of Corporate Affairs is actively working with various stakeholders such as state governments, central government ministries & departments, and industry associations for promotion and implementation of the scheme,” the Lok Sabha reply by Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Harsh Malhotra said.
The Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme (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.
In the first round of the pilot project, companies offered more than 1,27,000 opportunities across different sectors. The second round of the PM Internship Scheme Pilot Project has started from 9th January, 2025, and the companies are in the process of posting new as well as editing unfilled internship opportunities, the MCA had told the Parliament.
For the pilot project of the scheme, an amount of ₹840 crore has been approved of which around ₹48 crore have been spent so far, according to MCA.
In the ongoing second round of the internship scheme’s pilot project more than 118,000 internship opportunities have been posted by the partner firms
