PM Internship Round 3: Rs 9,000 Stipend, New Rules

The rules you remember are the old rules

If you looked at the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS) in 2024 or 2025, you probably remember four numbers: age 21 to 24, ₹5,000 a month, 12 months, family income under ₹8 lakh. Every one of those changed when the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) issued revised guidelines on 12 March 2026, with an addendum on 8 April 2026. The scheme is now in the third round of its pilot phase, the pilot has been extended to December 2026 with a target of about 1.10 lakh internships, and applications no longer open and close in one national window. Companies post openings on a rolling basis, and each posting carries its own closing date.

That single change — rolling postings instead of one window — is why so many "PM Internship last date" pages disagree with each other. There is no single last date for the scheme. There is only the closing date on the specific posting you want to apply to.

What the March 2026 rules actually say

The ₹9,000 a month is split: the company pays ₹900 and the government pays ₹8,100 directly to your Aadhaar-seeded bank account by DBT. On top of that there is a one-time grant of ₹6,000, paid in two parts of ₹3,000 — the first within 15 days of joining, the second after 90 active days. At the base rate, a 6-month internship is worth ₹54,000 in monthly assistance plus the ₹6,000 grant; a 9-month internship is worth ₹81,000 plus the grant. Some companies add extra assistance on top, and those postings say so on the portal listing.

At least half of every internship must be actual work experience rather than classroom training. Interns are also covered by government life and personal accident insurance on the pattern of PMJJBY and PMSBY for the duration of the internship.

Who can apply — and who is shut out

You are eligible if you are an Indian citizen aged 18 to 25 on the date you apply, you are not in full-time employment, and you hold one of the listed qualifications: Class 10, Class 12, an ITI certificate, a polytechnic diploma, or a degree such as BA, B.Sc, B.Com, BCA, BBA, B.Pharma or B.E./B.Tech. Postgraduates in MA, M.Sc, M.Com, MCA or M.Tech can also apply under the new rules. Students in online, distance or correspondence courses may apply, and final-year students of full-time degree or postgraduate courses may apply if they upload a No Objection Certificate from their institution on MCA's template, signed by the Head of Department, Dean, Principal or Training and Placement Officer.

The exclusions matter as much as the inclusions. You cannot apply if:

• You graduated from an IIT, IIM, National Law University, IISER, NID, IIIT or IISc, or you hold a CA, CMA, CS, MBBS, BDS, MD, MS, MBA, MPhil or PhD.
• You are currently in, or have completed, an apprenticeship or training under a government scheme such as NATS or NAPS. This one catches people out: finishing a bank or transport apprenticeship closes the PMIS door afterwards.
• You, your parents or your spouse earned more than ₹12 lakh in the preceding financial year.
• A family member (you, your parents or your spouse) is a permanent or regular government employee, including in PSUs, statutory bodies and local bodies. Contractual staff do not count.

The portal runs an "Are you eligible?" checker before registration, and it asks these same questions. Answer it honestly: the income and government-employee conditions are covered by self-declaration, and a false declaration discovered later ends the internship.

One application, followed end to end

Here is how a single application moves, based on the Candidate User Manual published on the portal:

1. Registeron pminternship.mca.gov.in or the official PMIS app with your mobile number and OTP, and set a password. There is no fee at any stage.
2. Complete e-KYCthrough Aadhaar or DigiLocker. The full internship details and the Apply button stay locked until this is done — this is the step most applicants stall on.
3. Build your profilepersonal details, then qualifications in order (Class 10, Class 12, then degree), with certificates uploaded as PDFs of up to 7 MB. The portal generates your CV from this.
4. Search postingsby state, district, sector, field or distance, and read the duration, qualification and benefits on each card before applying.
5. Apply to up to 3 internships at a time.Final-year students upload the NOC at this step.
6. Watch for offers.You can hold up to 2 offers at once but accept only 1. An offer lapses if you do not respond within 14 days.
7. Joinon the reporting date in the offer letter. There is a 14-day grace period, and a supervisor can approve an extension of up to one month.
8. Check your Aadhaar seedingunder My Profile before joining, so the government's ₹8,100 share can actually reach your bank account.

The offer rules have teeth. Two rejected, lapsed or not-reported offers in a row block you for three months; two in total block you for a year. If you drop out mid-internship, you sit out for six months and get one more chance. A second dropout, or a termination by the company, ends your PMIS eligibility altogether. Apply only to postings you would genuinely join.

What is actually open right now

On 19 October 2026, the portal's public listing showed 1,908 postings with 15,620 openings from 207 companies across 34 states and Union Territories, and the latest closing date visible was 18 November 2026. Banking and financial services had the most postings, followed by oil, gas and energy, metals and mining, and manufacturing. By minimum qualification, most postings asked for graduates, but there were also postings for Class 12, diploma, ITI and Class 10 holders. The named partner companies include Reliance Industries, TCS, HDFC Bank, ONGC, Infosys, NTPC, Tata Steel and Larsen & Toubro, and from 2026 the employer pool extends beyond the original top 500 to the top 2,000 companies by CSR spending, plus firms above the stated turnover or net-worth thresholds.

A note on what this scheme is not: it is not a government job, and it does not guarantee employment afterwards. A Ministry of Labour memorandum makes clear that interns are not employees. Companies may choose to hire interns who perform well, and some do, but that is the company's decision, not a scheme promise.

Three traps that cost applicants money or time

The fee trap. Registration and application are completely free. Anyone — a website, an agent, a cyber-café board — asking for money to "register" you for PMIS is running a fraud, by definition. The only official address is pminternship.mca.gov.in, and the free helpline is 1800-11-6090.

The stale-rules trap. Pages still quoting age 21–24, ₹5,000 a month and 12-month terms are describing the 2024–25 pilot. Even parts of the official portal's older FAQ text lag behind the March 2026 guidelines; the updated guideline PDFs in the portal's Guidelines menu are the controlling documents.

The Aadhaar trap. Your age is read from Aadhaar, so a wrong date of birth there produces an "out of age range" error that no portal setting can fix — correct it at an Aadhaar centre first. And if your bank account is not Aadhaar-seeded, your DBT share has nowhere to land.

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