Only about 30% of candidates who accepted internship offers under the Prime Minister Internship Scheme have joined their posts since the scheme was launched October 2024, the Union government told Parliament on Monday.
The scheme, introduced in the Union Budget 2024-25, aims to provide internship opportunities to one crore young people over five years.
Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Harsh Malhotra told Lok Sabha in a written reply that only 16,060 candidates, or around 30% of the 52,600 who accepted internship offers in the two pilot rounds, joined the private companies and public sector undertakings where they were placed.
Malhotra added that 6,618 interns, which is nearly 41% of those who joined, left before completing the 12-month internship. Of this, 4,565 candidates are from round 1 and 2,053 candidates from round 2.
In both rounds, only 95 interns have received full-time job offers from their host companies, government data showed.
Malhotra was responding to two separate questions from All India Trinamool Congress MPs Sayani Ghosh and June Maliah in the Lok Sabha.
He said that feedback from interns pointed to long travel distances, the one-year internship duration and lack of interest in assigned roles as key reasons for low acceptance and high dropouts. To address this, the government has geo-tagged internship locations and issued more detailed job descriptions in the second round, Financial Express reported.
The ministry has also used only Rs 73.72 crore of the Rs 10,831-crore allocation for 2025-’26 under the scheme as of September 30, the minister said.
Most applications came from Andhra Pradesh, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of candidates who joined, followed by Assam and Madhya Pradesh.
The scheme was announced as part of the Union Budget 2024-’25 to provide internship opportunities to one crore youth in 500 top companies over five years.
The Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs launched the pilot project of the scheme on October 3, 2024.
Also read: Why young Indians are not interested in the prime minister’s ambitious internship scheme
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