हम शीर्ष शैक्षिक संस्थानों का विस्तार कर और विश्वविद्यालयों को वैश्विक मानकों तक उन्नत कर शिक्षा की गुणवत्ता बढ़ाएँगे… हम शैक्षिक और व्यावहारिक कौशल को जोड़ने के लिए इंटर्नशिप कार्यक्रम शुरू करेंगे।

A note on the claim. This entry was imported as a promise of "1 crore internships in top 500 companies". That target was announced in the Union Budget of July 2024, three months after the manifesto. What the manifesto says, in its education chapter, is simply: "We will launch internship programmes to blend academic and practical skills." The one-crore figure is the scheme's, not the manifesto's, and it is the fairest benchmark available — so this entry reports progress against it while grading the promise as written.

The scheme was launched, in a form. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs told the Lok Sabha on 3 August 2026: "As an initiation to the Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS), which was announced in the Budget 2024-25, Ministry of Corporate Affairs has launched a Pilot Project on 3rd October, 2024. Two rounds of the Pilot Project have been completed and Round III of the Pilot Project is currently ongoing."

And then, in a footnote to its own budget table: "BE has been allocated to the Ministry for the main scheme. However, the main scheme has not commenced, and Pilot Project of PM Internship Scheme is being implemented."

Nearly two years after launch, the scheme that was to place one crore young people in India's largest companies over five years is still a pilot.

The budget numbers show what that means in money. For 2024-25: budget estimate ₹2,000 crore, revised estimate ₹380 crore. For 2025-26: budget estimate ₹10,831.07 crore, revised estimate ₹526 crore. For 2026-27: budget estimate ₹4,788.45 crore, no revised estimate yet. In the second year, 95 per cent of what was budgeted was taken away at the revision stage, because the scheme it was budgeted for had not started.

The redesign tells the same story from a different angle. Revised guidelines of 12 March 2026 raised the monthly allowance from ₹5,000 to ₹9,000, widened eligibility from ages 21-24 to 18-25, admitted master's graduates and final-year students, allowed internships of six or nine months instead of a fixed twelve, expanded which companies may participate and moved to a rolling cycle. Governments change scheme parameters that comprehensively when uptake on both sides — companies offering places and candidates accepting them — has fallen short.

The term runs to 2029, so this is an interim reading. On the manifesto's own words — launch internship programmes — something has been launched. On the scale it was budgeted for, almost nothing has happened. Our verdict is lacks context.