Supply-Demand Mismatch? Nirmala Sitharaman Asks More Corporates To Come Forward For PM Internship Scheme – News18

Last Updated:March 18, 2025, 08:44 IST

According to officials in the know, there seems to be a “supply-demand mismatch” with the qualifications eligible under it not matching the job profiles that can be offered by the companies that have been on-boarded to offer internship opportunities

Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked more companies to participate in the PM Internship Scheme (PMIS), citing larger national interest after the number of candidates accepting internship offers was lower than expected in the first round.

News18 has learnt that few corporate firms have been coming forward to extend internship offers to students eligible under the recently launched PMIS probably because of a “supply-demand mismatch” with a significant number of those applying for it needing to be skilled for the said role before they could be granted the opportunity.

The scheme announced during the 2024-25 annual budget aims to provide young individuals between 21 and 24 years of age, from low-income households, with 12-month internship opportunities (with six months of hands-on-work) in the country’s top 500 companies with a stipend of Rs 5,000 a month (besides a one-time grant of Rs 6000).

The ambitious scheme being implemented by the Corporate Affairs Ministry aims to bridge the skills gap and targets to facilitate internships for one crore youth over the next five years.

The second round of the scheme began in January and applications will close on March 31. “I would appeal to the industry to make sure that the rest of them, beyond those who have come forward, should also participate. This is a national cause…for a country of our size and with the objective that the top 500 companies participate, we still have some way to go,” Sitharaman said at an event on Monday.

‘Supply-Demand Mismatch’

According to officials in the know, there seems to be a “supply-demand mismatch” with the qualifications eligible under it not matching the job profiles that can be offered by these companies that have been on-boarded to offer internship opportunities.

“The eligibility criterion of the scheme is such that those applying are not able to fit into the profiles posted by the companies. While the firms need skilled individuals, they have not been able to find many suitable candidates fitting the required job profile. We have been in talks with the firms to discuss the possible opportunities that fit the bill,” a government official familiar with the process told News18.

While the dashboard on PMIS website shows that it has on offer a total of 1,18,000 internship opportunities posted by various firms across 25 sectors, 735 districts and 36 states, it doesn’t give the number of internship offers granted so far under the scheme. When the portal was thrown open in October, the number of internships on offer were 1.25 lakh.

The scheme caters to five categories of students eligible under it —fresh graduates (from non-premier institutions); class 10 pass; class 12 pass; ITI and diploma holders.

As per the PMIS dashboard, the number of internship opportunities posted for each of these qualifications are — graduates (36,902); class 10 pass (24,696); class 12 pass (15,142); ITI (23,629) and diploma (18,589).

The number of internship opportunities posted by companies in large states, including Uttar Pradesh (UP), Madhya Pradesh (MP), Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, among others has been rather low.

The PMIS dashboard shows that only 7,710 opportunities are posted under UP, of which 2,676 are for graduates, 2,387 for class 10, 1,221 for ITI, 89 for class 12 and 617 for diploma.

Similarly, MP has only 5,209 opportunities posted under it and Rajasthan has 4,837. States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are slightly better, having posted 15,118, 10,504, 9,209 and 15,067 opportunities, respectively.

“For the scheme to move forward, eligible students under it — mostly class 10 and 12 pass — need to be skilled depending on the kind of industry located in their region. There is a need to locally map these students, skill them and then make them suitable offers in their region itself or in neighbouring cities. Currently, companies have been reluctant because they don’t know what opportunities they could probably offer to these students without having the required skill set,” the official said.

‘Need To Tweak Eligibility Conditions’

The portal threw open the registrations for the first phase starting October last year. The second phase of applications opened in December and was to end on March 12, but the last date to apply has now been extended to March 31.

The number of valid applications being received too is yet to climb up. In the first phase, the ministry stated that it has received around six lakh applications. Of these, it is learnt, only close to two lakh applications are valid or only as many are eligible to avail of the scheme.

“The number of valid applications or those fitting the eligibility criterion remains low. The second phase is still ongoing. The number of students registering is higher, but when the applications are filtered, it comes down to a relatively small number. This is mainly because most of the applications do not fill the eligibility criterion due to the conditions put forward in the scheme, including that the youth must not be enrolled in college full-time and neither should they be employed anywhere full time,” a second official said.

The other conditions in the scheme are that no family member of the applicant must be earning more than Rs 8 lakh per annum and that no member in the family has a government job.

These conditions must be tweaked or fine-tuned for more young people falling in this bracket to be able to apply and get the industry experience, the second official quoted above said.

To boost the number of applications, the ministry has recently started an offer — ‘Refer a friend’ — where students can earn reward points by referring their friends. The reward points will be given upon successful application by the person that has been referred. The offer pops up as one visits the official PMIS website. Also, the ministry is posting advertisements on social media and other such platforms to reach out to the youth.