The Centre is planning to expand the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS) to include professional services firms such as chartered accountants, cost accountants and company secretaries, potentially opening up a wider set of internship opportunities under the government’s flagship skilling initiative.
“The government is doing some modification to the PMIS scheme. Once they are announced, we will implement the PMIS scheme,” said Prasanna Kumar D, the newly elected president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), during his first media interaction Wednesday.
Kumar added that until now the PMIS scheme was eligible in corporates firms with corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds as professional services firms do not have provision for CSR funds, and hence were not able to participate in the scheme.
According to the ICAI president, once the scheme is implemented, professional services firms will have to fund the stipend for interns from their own resources under the vocational training expenditure, which may qualify as CSR under the proposed changes to the scheme.
At present, PMIS allows only the top 500 companies—ranked by CSR expenditure—to offer internships. However, with the scheme witnessing poor candidate uptake, the government is now looking at reforms that could broaden the base of participating organisations.
Under the current PMIS scheme, interns are engaged for 12 months and receive a one-time grant of Rs 6,000 from the central government, along with a monthly stipend of Rs 5,000 split between Rs 4,500 from the government and Rs 500 from employers, through their CSR funds.
The scheme is currently open to candidates with Class 10 or Class 12 qualifications, ITI certification, polytechnic diplomas, or graduation degrees. Prasanna indicated that training at professional services firms may vary based on educational qualification.
“The idea is to get a good employment opportunity for the candidates after PMIS,” he said.
Launched in October 2024, the participation in the PMIS scheme has remained muted across both pilot rounds. While the first round saw around 82,000 internship offers, only about 8,760 candidates joined. In the second round, launched in January 2025, just about 7,300 interns joined despite tens of thousands of offers and acceptances.
ThePrint had earlier reported that the PMIS scheme is undergoing transformation and would come up with a third round that may introduce flexible internship duration instead of the fixed 12-month tenure. The current stipend structure is also likely to be revised upwards.
While the ICAI president did not share details of the proposed modifications to the scheme, he said the Ministry of Corporate Affairs would announce the updated changes in “less than a month”.
