The Standing Committee on Finance, chaired by BJP MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, has urged the central government to reconsider and remove the condition that excludes candidates from the families of regular civil servants from applying for internships under the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS). asked.
“The committee strongly recommends that the criteria be revised, focusing only on the 800,000 ₹ 800,000 income limit and eliminating the exclusion for regular civil servants, to make the system more inclusive and fair. ”, the committee said in its report on the MCA tabled in Parliament. Friday.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA)’s report on subsidy demand for 2024-25 highlights two important provisions of the scheme’s eligibility criteria. Candidates will be excluded if any family member has an annual income of more than 800,000 rupees or is a regular civil servant.
The parliamentary committee is of the view that it would be unjust to completely exclude the families of regular civil servants, as many of them earn less than 800,000 rupees and may need support under the system. It shows.
ambitious vision
The parliamentary panel lauded the ambitious vision of PMIS, which aims to provide internships to one billion youth in five years with an estimated expenditure of Rs 63,000 crore.
Targeting 1.25 million internships in 2024-25, the pilot phase has successfully integrated skill development, financial support, insurance coverage and transparent processes through the PMIS portal to empower and upskill youth. It demonstrates a commendable effort to close the gap, the panel report added. .
The committee confirmed that Rs 2,000 billion has been allocated for BE and Rs 380 million for RE in 2024-25. He added that while these funds are sufficient for the pilot phase, it is important to dynamically reassess funding needs to scale up.
While these features are laudable, challenges remain regarding comprehensiveness, monitoring, stakeholder engagement, and post-internship outcomes that impact overall budget efficiency, the report added.
Although PMIS is in the pilot phase, the Standing Committee emphasized that internship-to-employment conversion rates should be a key success indicator.
Therefore, the committee recommended establishing a robust system to monitor and track this indicator to ensure that programs effectively create career opportunities and meet industry demands.
The parliamentary panel felt that the institutional monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) framework was critical to transparency and timely amendments.
The Committee believes that collaboration with the top 500 companies through CSR funding is a key strength, but greater collaboration with small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups and regional stakeholders is needed to ensure comprehensive sector and geographic representation. We believe broad engagement is essential.
He added that digital portals and multilingual support will improve accessibility, but campaigns that target remote areas are needed.
Risks such as corporate abuse and inadequate oversight of internships must be mitigated to protect outcomes, and mechanisms to monitor them are needed.
The committee also believed that addressing the challenges faced by candidates from remote or underserved areas is important to ensuring equitable access to internships. The Committee considered that without adequate support for living expenses, these candidates may not be able to participate, which may hinder the program’s inclusivity and potential to attract a diverse workforce. .
The Congressional Panel also recommended that host companies tailor training programs to industry skill requirements to ensure interns are industry-ready. The committee recommended encouraging regular independent evaluations to ensure transparency and relaxing eligibility criteria for marginalized and economically weaker candidates to increase inclusivity.
Under the pilot program, 280 of the top 500 CSR spenders provided 128,000 internship opportunities. PMIS received a total of 6.2 million applications and youth registration closed on November 15th. The first group of interns began their internship journey on December 2nd.
