Internship portal to be launched on Oct 3; top 500 companies can tie up with others in supply chain

The portal to apply for the internships directly with the country’s top 500 companies will be launched on October 3, beginning first with uploading of available internship positions by companies and then subsequently to be made active for candidates to apply, sources said.

There will be certain conditions attached for the candidates to apply for these internship positions, which include being in the age bracket of 21- 24 years old and not engaged in full-time employment. Individuals belonging to families with government jobs will be excluded from the internship scheme, sources said.

Also, candidates having studied from IIT, IIM, IISER or having CA, CMA among others as a qualification won’t be eligible for the scheme. Youth from ITI and Kaushal Kendra will be eligible to apply, sources said.

There are certain criteria about age and immediate family members not being taxpayers or government employees. The portal will open for the companies to upload details about the internship openings from October 3 onwards and will go live on October 12 for candidates to apply for internships,” a person in the know told The Indian Express.

The selection of candidates would be done through a backend bot and the companies will then scrutinise and select the candidate, the person said while explaining the selection process for the scheme. “There won’t be any bias in the selection process. If a company is not fine with the automatically selected candidate for the position, then it would revert and the process will begin again. A panel comprising government officials and industry representatives will be formed to address any selection-related issues and ensure compliance in an unbiased manner,” the person cited above said.

The internship scheme, under the Budget announcement of Prime Minister’s Package for Employment and Skilling with an overall outlay of Rs 2 lakh crore, aims to provide skill training to over one crore youth in India’s top 500 companies in five years, with a focus on those with lower employability. An amount of Rs 4,500 will be provided by the Government of India through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) with an additional Rs 500 offset to be provided by the company’s CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds.

The companies have been selected on the basis of the average CSR spend of the last three years. The scheme, which would be implemented by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, will provide for spending at least half the time (6 months total) in actual working experience/job environment and not in the classroom. “Companies can tie-up with companies in their forward and backward supply chain (e.g. suppliers or customers) or other companies or institutions in its group or otherwise for the internships,” sources said.

There will be two phases for the internship scheme, with a target of skilling 30 lakh youth over a period of two years in phase 1. Phase 2 aims to skill an additional 70 lakh youth over the following three years.

Sources said that as per the rules being decided for the scheme, a company may choose to pay an intern more than the Rs 5,000 per month provided under the scheme. However, any amount exceeding Rs 500, which has to be given by the company from their CSR funds, will be fully borne by the company and will not be considered as part of CSR expenditure.

The government will provide a grant of Rs 6,000 per annum for incidentals, which should cover any miscellaneous expenses incurred by the intern during the internship, sources said.

Industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), which has partnered with the MCA to roll out the internship scheme, said the scheme will enhance youth employability in India by offering them hands-on exposure to real-world business environments. The scheme will also benefit the industry by creating a pipeline of skilled, work-ready youth who can be employed post-internship both in large as well as micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the industry grouping said. “With industries grappling with a growing talent shortage, the PM Internship Scheme provides a crucial bridge. By offering on-the-job training to youth, it will prepare them to meet the evolving Industry demands, while ensuring that businesses get access to a skilled and agile future workforce, fostering progress and innovation,” Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII said.