Photo: pminternship.mca.gov.in
A little more than 50,000 candidates have so far accepted the 1.53 lakh offers made by companies under the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS), according to data provided by the government to the Lok Sabha. Of those who have accepted, 8,700 or about 6% have so far joined their respective companies as interns.
The PMIS was announced in the Budget 2024-25, and aims to provide internships in India’s top 500 companies to one crore youth in five years. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs in October 2024 launched a pilot project of the scheme, which aimed to provide 1.25 lakh internship opportunities to the youth in one year.
In the first round of this pilot, companies posted more than 1.27 lakh internship opportunities on the PMIS Portal across the country.
“Against this, more than 6.21 lakh applications were received from about 1.81 lakh candidates,” Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply posed by members of Parliament Vijay Kumar Dubey and Shobhanaben Mahendrasinh Baraiya.
“Partner companies made over 82,000 internship offers to over 60,000 candidates, out of which more than 28,000 candidates accepted offers to join the internship, and over 8700 candidates joined their internship,” Ms. Sitharaman added.
In the second round of the pilot, which began on January 9, 2025, the partner companies posted over 1.18 lakh internship opportunities, including new ones and edited unfilled opportunities from the previous round, across 735 districts of the country.
“Over 4.55 lakh applications were received from over 2.14 lakh applicants in this round,” Ms. Sitharaman said. “As on 17.07.2025, partner companies have made over 71,000 offers to the youth and over 22,500 offers have been accepted. Currently, rolling out of offers and the process of acceptances/ joining by interns is in progress.”
In total, so far, 1.53 lakh offers have been made to candidates, of which 50,500 were accepted.
Published – July 21, 2025 04:56 pm IST
