PMKVY 4.0: Under 50% target enrollees receive certifications, placement data missing, flags panel report

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) is way behind its own target of providing certification under the Prime Minister Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), a recent parliamentary panel report has highlighted. It has also stressed the need to provide placement details under the PMKVY 4.0 as it is the “real barometer for measuring the success of the scheme”.

The report, submitted to the parliament on March 28 by a standing committee on labour, textiles and skill development headed by BJP MP and former chief minister of Karnataka Basavaraj Bommai, reveals that against a target of 45 lakh trainee certifications for the financial year 2024-25, only 19.17 lakh – less than half – had been achieved as of March 3, 2025, a shortfall of 25.83 lakh.

The ministry has blamed the delay in cabinet approval of the Skill India Programme (SIP), which provides funding for PMKVY, for missing the targets for the scheme.

As for placements, the PMKVY 4.0 was “delinked” from placements, after versions 1.0 to 3.0 showed outrageously poor placement figures. The fact of its delinking is in PMKVY’s main policy document as well as cited in multiple replies to questions raised in parliament.

The design principles of PMKVY guideline document states, “Delinking of placement from skilling to lay emphasis on empowering trained candidates to choose their career paths and focus on entrepreneurship and livelihood creation.”

Careers360 had filed an RTI seeking to understand why and when placements – according to the panel the “real barometer” for assessing PMKVY’s success – were delinked. The belligerent reply from the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) – Poonam Chaudhary at the time – described it as a “hypothetical question”.

A part of the Skill India Mission, the PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana was launched in 2015 with the goal of skill development through short-term training (STT), up-skilling and re-skilling, and recognition of prior learning (RPL). The current version of the scheme – PMKVY 4.0 – started in 2022 and is slated to continue till 2026.

PMKVY 4.0: Decline in enrolment

Apart from the shortfalls in trainee certifications, there has also been a decrease in enrollment in the fourth phase of the scheme.

“The committee is concerned to note that under PMKVY 4.0, during the last three years, there is persistent shortfall in enrolment,” says the panel report. The admission figures are as given below. For the 2024-25 year, figures are till January 9, 2025.

PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana: Years and enrolment

“The physical target for 2025-26 is 30 lakh certification as recommended in 2022 and as on February 16, 2025, only 14.91 lakh candidates have been certified since 2022-23,” the report stated.

The reason provided by the ministry to the committee said, “The staggered approvals for release of funds have impacted full-fledged roll out of the scheme, leading to intermittent momentum across financial years 2022-23, 2023- 24, and 2024-25. Further, in the absence of cabinet approval, the Scheme was operating with staggered fund releases from the Department of Expenditure, leading to slow implementation and achievement of target and low expenditure.”

The 'Skill India Programme' is the ministry's largest scheme, comprising 60- 65% of its total budget and was launched in 2022. PMKVY 4.0, the Pradhan Mantri National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (PM-NAPS), and the Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) Scheme – the three key components – are now combined under the composite central sector scheme of SIP.

February 7, 2025, the union cabinet approved the continuation and restructuring of the central-sector Skill India Programme till 2026, with an overall outlay of Rs 8,800 crore from 2022-23 to 2025-26.

The 2025-26 budget allocation for PMKVY is Rs 1,915 crore out of the total Rs 2,700 crore earmarked for Skill India in the current financial year.

“The ministry has assured that since the scheme has now been approved, the ministry expects uninterrupted flow of funds, ensuring maximum utilization of funds and achievement of target in FY 2025-26. To maximize the achievement of physical targets under PMKVY 4.0, the ministry has stated that they are taking pro-active convergence efforts to ensure synergy and improve the outcomes and actively collaborating with state governments and industries to maximize the impact of PMKVY 4.0,” stated the report.

Among the job roles, the top five were that of traditional hand embroiderer, electric vehicle service technician, animator and solar LED technician. Uttar Pradesh (5,03,708), Rajasthan (2,95,074) and Madhya Pradesh (2,81,253) were among the top three states in terms of enrollment.

Also read How Rajasthan stole the march on EV skilling under PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana

PMKVY courses and attrition

Data the ministry has shared with the panel shows that less than half of the enrollees ultimately leave PMKVY courses with certificates. After enrolment, there’s significant attrition in the numbers at every stage of the process – training, assessment and certification.

As of February 16, 2025 the number of candidates enrolled, trained, assessed and certified were 31.52 lakh, 24.49 lakh, 16.13 lakh and 14.91 lakh, respectively. Thus, 78% of enrolled candidates were trained, 66% of trained candidates were assessed and 92% of assessed candidates were certified. To put it even more simply, out of every 100 candidates enrolled, 78 were trained, 52 were assessed and just 47 certified.

“The committee observed that many candidates, who completed training were not found eligible for assessment due to shortage of attendance. It is the considered opinion of the committee that the procedure adopted for assessment of certified candidates has to be reviewed and the private training providers and other agencies involved, if any, that do not perform to commendable extent should be blacklisted and debarred from being an implementing agency of the scheme. The committee is of the firm view that a more transparent, simplified and robust assessment system should be put in place to look after the implementation of the scheme,” stated the report.

PMKVY 4.0 Placements: ‘Hypothetical questions’

Since the launch of the scheme till January 9, 2025 more than 1.60 crore candidates have been trained under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana. Out of them, 23.28 lakh candidates have been trained under PMKVY 4.0, under which placement has been delinked.

Out of the earlier three phases, 24.37 lakh (57%) were placed where placements were tracked under the short term training (STT) component.

The ministry has in the report cited various challenges faced during placements:

• Candidates declining job opportunities due to various reasons
• PMKVY 3.0 initiatives that were not placement linked; the report says about 43% of training – including courses for Covid workers – did not focus on placements.
• Pandemic created employment problems
• Under PMKVY 1.0, reporting placements was not mandatory and, therefore, may have been underreported.
• Difficulty in tracking and collection of placement documents

The response to Careers360’s RTI query on placements read: “CPIO is not to create information or to interpret information or to solve the problems raised by the applicants or furnish replies to hypothetical questions.” On non-utilisation of funds, CPIO Poonam Chaudhary had said, “CPIO need not communicate to citizens the reason why a certain thing was done or not done in the sense of justification.”

The parliament panel clearly has a different view. “Observing that although placement has been delinked under PMKVY 4.0, the committee are of the firm opinion that the placement statistics is the real barometer for measuring the success of the scheme and needless to say that the ministry should make concerted efforts with stakeholders to ensure uploading of placement details of the certified candidate on Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH) Portal so as to have database of employment generated under the scheme,” says its report.