The PM Internship Scheme: eligibility, format, and what else counts if you are not eligible

Who can apply to the PM Internship Scheme?

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs launched the scheme on 3 October 2024, and the Press Information Bureau's overview of 12 October 2024 set the pilot's terms: a 12 month internship for Indian nationals aged 21 to 24 who are, in that document's words, "not employed full-time or engaged in full-time education". Both halves of that bar count. Candidates on online or distance learning programmes were eligible from the start.

The qualification list in that document is wide. You are inside the criteria if you have passed High School or Higher Secondary School, hold an ITI certificate or a polytechnic diploma, or hold a graduate degree such as a BBA, BCA, B.Com, B.Sc, BA or B.Pharma.

A later PIB release, dated 22 April 2026, records an expansion. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs announcement brought final year undergraduate and postgraduate students into the scheme, put the age band at 18 to 25, and required a No Objection Certificate from the institution confirming the internship will not clash with academics. A Head of Department, Dean, Principal or Training and Placement Officer can sign it.

What is the age limit now?

18 to 25 years, as stated in the April 2026 release. The pilot phase ran on a narrower band of 21 to 24, which is the figure still quoted in the October 2024 documents and in a great deal of older writing about the scheme. Both numbers are official. They belong to different phases, so check the age line on the round you are actually applying to before you assume you are out.

Age and enrolment are the two conditions the April 2026 release restates. It does not repeat the income bar or the list of excluded degrees, so for those you are still reading the October 2024 pilot document, and the portal's own criteria page for the round you want is the only place that will tell you whether they still stand.

Until April 2026 the scheme was closed to anyone in full time education, so a student in the middle of a B.Com could not apply at all. Final year undergraduates and postgraduates are now inside it, with the NOC as the condition attached. A second year student is still outside, and the wait is until final year.

Who is not eligible?

The October 2024 PIB overview lists the exclusions plainly, and the April 2026 release does not restate them, so treat what follows as the pilot's criteria rather than a settled standing rule.

Graduates of the IITs, IIMs, National Law Universities, the IISERs, the NIDs and the IIITs are out. So are holders of CA, CMA, CS, MBBS, BDS, MBA, or any master's or higher degree. Anyone already undergoing skill training, an apprenticeship, an internship or student training under a Central or State government scheme is out, as is anyone who has completed an apprenticeship under NATS or NAPS.

Two family conditions sit alongside those in the same document. A candidate is ineligible if the income of any family member exceeded ₹8 lakh for FY 2023-24, and ineligible if a family member is a permanent or regular government employee.

Read that second one carefully before you give up on the scheme. The document names permanent and regular government employment only; it does not say one way or the other about contract or outsourced roles. Where a household's position is not obvious, settle it through the portal's own help channels before the window opens.

Is the PM Internship Scheme online or offline?

The portal is online and the internship is served at a company location. Every posting carries a location, along with the nature of the internship, the minimum educational qualification and the facilities available, and the PIB note of 21 March 2025 describes a mobile app that filters opportunities by district, state, sector and location radius. The October 2024 overview describes hands on experience in a real working environment, and neither it nor the March 2025 note sets out a work from home format.

That matters for anyone counting cost. A placement in another district means rent, travel and time, against a stipend set at a fixed monthly figure. If the arithmetic does not work, the comparison worth running is against a remote programme you can do from your own town, and our rundown of the routes that carry remote internships sets those out.

What does the internship involve for twelve months?

PIB's Round II release describes 12 month paid internships that combine training with professional experience, of which at least six months are hands on work in a real working environment. What an intern does day to day is set by the company and the sector.

The pilot spanned 24 sectors, among them oil, gas and energy, travel and hospitality, automotive, and banking and financial services. Which sectors carry vacancies in any given round is a question for that round's own listing pages, not for the scheme overview.

Read the posting rather than the scheme page when you are deciding. Two internships under the same scheme, in the same city, can be completely different jobs, and the posting is where that difference is written down.

How much is the stipend, and who pays it?

The April 2026 release puts monthly financial assistance at a minimum of ₹9,000. Under the pilot, the October 2024 overview set ₹5,000 a month, and it split that figure: the partner company paid ₹500 of it against your attendance and conduct, and the government sent the remaining ₹4,500 as a Direct Benefit Transfer to an Aadhaar seeded bank account.

The pilot documents also record ₹6,000 paid once, after joining, again by DBT. Cover under Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and under Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana comes with the internship at government expense, and partner companies may add accidental cover of their own.

Stipend rules on any government scheme change between rounds. Treat the figure on the round's own page as the operative one. If the vocabulary on a listing is what is confusing you, the explainer on stipend, unpaid and performance based pay covers the words themselves.

What happens after you register on the portal?

Registration on the portal generates a resume from the information you enter. From there the process runs in a fixed order:

1. Register on the PM Internship Portal and complete the profile that becomes your resume.
2. Browse internships and apply, filtering by location, sector, functional role and qualification.
3. Apply to up to five internships in the pilot phase design. The mobile app launched on 17 March 2025 allowed three at a time.
4. Wait for the portal to shortlist. It sends companies roughly two to three times the number of candidates as there are offers, weighing your preferences against the company's requirement, with representation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and Persons with Disabilities.
5. The company selects on its own criteria and extends an offer, which you accept on the portal.

Partner companies were drawn from the 500 firms with the highest average CSR spend across the three preceding years. Other companies, banks and financial institutions can join with approval from the Ministry, particularly from underrepresented sectors.

When does the window open, and what did past rounds look like?

A PIB account of the pilot phase published in March 2025 dates Round I from October to December 2024; the October 2024 launch release had set the pilot target at 1.25 lakh internships across 24 sectors. Round II offered more than 1.18 lakh internships across all 735 districts with 327 companies taking part, and its application window closed on 31 March 2025. By April 2026 PIB described the pilot phase as being in its third round, with more than 300 companies having taken part.

Round II published its role split by qualification, which is where to look if you are working out whether a round has anything for someone with your qualification.

Qualification	Roles offered in Round II
Graduates (BA, B.Sc, B.Com, BBA, BCA and similar)	37,000
ITI holders	23,000
Diploma holders	18,000
12th pass	15,000
10th pass	25,000

Those two windows opened in the last quarter of one year and the first quarter of the next. That is a pattern from two rounds, not a schedule, and the portal carries the live dates.

What else counts if you are not eligible?

Several ministries and commissions run their own internships with their own published terms. None of the four pages opened for this guide states a family income or government employment test, but each sets a limit of its own, and in two cases that limit is narrower than the PM scheme's. Read the eligibility line before you apply.

• The National Commission for Women publishes its internship instructions, and they are course specific rather than open. Scheme A pays ₹5,000 for 30 days and takes first year students of the three year LLB, third year students of the five year LLB, and first year postgraduates in Women Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology or Social Work.
• NCW Scheme B, at ₹10,000 a month across two months, takes the later LLB years and second year postgraduates in those same subjects, in psychology, or on an LLM, M.Phil or PhD. Scheme C is a virtual placement of 30 days at ₹2,000, open only to candidates who already qualify under A or B. All three require at least 60% in every semester from Class XII on, and applications close quarterly.
• The Ministry of Women and Child Development runs a two month internship programme for women aged 21 to 40 from non Tier 1 cities and rural India who are currently enrolled in or associated with an institution, paying ₹20,000 a month, with up to 20 interns selected per batch.
• The National Human Rights Commission runs a short term internship of 15 days, offered through the year except in May, June, December and January, and it takes students from various streams, especially law.
• AICTE's own internship portal, set up under its Internship Policy (dated 2 April 2019 only in its filename), is where technical institutes are asked to arrange and record internships for their students, including the step where you obtain an NOC from your training and placement cell.

Their terms sit side by side in the comparison of official internship portals. Outside government, applications go through private listing boards, directly to small organisations, or to non-profit programmes that run remotely.

Does an excluded degree close the door for good?

No. The exclusions set this scheme's criteria and reach no further than it. An MBA holder or an IIT graduate is outside the PM Internship Scheme, and every other route applies its own test instead: the commission programmes listed above go by what you are studying, the Ministry of Women and Child Development programme by age, city and current enrolment, and a direct application to an organisation by whatever that organisation asks for.

The same holds in the other direction for people who left college a while ago. Age and current enrolment are the binding conditions here, and a candidate who has been out of study for two years may still be inside them. If that is your position, the question of interning after graduation is the one to answer next.

What to check on the portal before you apply

Four things, in the order they will trip you up. The age line for the current round, because it changed. The family income and government employment conditions, because the pilot document makes them absolute and the newer release is silent on them. The location of each posting, because the internship is served at a company location. And the NOC, if you are a final year student, because an institution can take a week to sign one.

Keep your documents ready before the window rather than during it. Marksheets, an Aadhaar seeded bank account for the Direct Benefit Transfer and the NOC are the three to have in hand, and the same NOC habit applies to college arranged placements, which the note on NOC letters for internships covers.