New Delhi: A performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has flagged serious data integrity-related lapses in the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), one of Modi government’s flagship schemes to skill India’s youth, with beneficiary records showing bank account numbers reading ‘111111…’, duplicated across thousands of candidates, or replaced with blank and invalid entries, alongside same photographs.
According to the report, tabled during the recently concluded Winter Session of Parliament, bank account details for 95.53 percent of the beneficiaries across states were either entered as zero, left blank, or were not available.
The audit was carried out at the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), along with physical surveys in eight states—Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
PMKVY was launched in 2015 to equip India’s youth with industry-relevant skills and improve employment outcomes. Between 2015 and 2022, the scheme saw three phases, wherein the ministry released Rs 10,194 crore to the agencies responsible for implementation, and provided skill certification to 1.10 crore beneficiaries, according to government figures.
The scheme required candidates to have valid bank accounts because the Rs 500 incentive for certified candidates was to be paid via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT). Implementing agencies were responsible for helping candidates open these accounts if needed and correctly enter the bank details on the Skill India Portal (SIP), where candidates themselves filled in the information.
However, CAG’s analysis of data related to PMKVY 2.0 and 3.0 revealed that the ‘bankAccountdetails’ field contained zeros, ‘null’, ‘N/A’, or was blank for 90,66,264 of the total 95,90,801 participants or 94.53 percent of cases.
“Even in cases of use of single account for one candidate (4,72,156 unique accounts for each candidate), instances of apparent wrong account numbers were noticed viz., ‘11111111111…’, ‘123456……’, single digit account numbers, or just text, names, address, or special characters etc…,” the CAG report reads.
The ministry told the auditor that initially account details was a mandatory field on the Skill India Portal, but was later deemed non-mandatory due to implementation issues at ground level. “The ministry further added that the disbursement to candidates was to be done on the basis of Aadhaar seeding, which supports pay-outs directly into their Aadhaar-linked bank account and eliminates the need to collect bank account numbers,” the report said.
The audit also found widespread repetition and invalid entries in email addresses and mobile numbers. Many candidates had placeholder or incomplete emails, such as strings of zeros followed by “@gmail.com”, “abc@gmail.com”, or “123@gmail.com”, and mobile numbers with less than 10 digits, or repeated sequences like ‘1000000000’ or ‘1111111111’. The field ‘Candidate_Email’ was also marked as ‘Migrated data’ for 36,49,344 candidates.
While examining updated PMKVY 4.0 data (October 2024), similar issues were reported—175 invalid and 2,263 repeated mobile numbers were found, along with more than 2.72 lakh null email addresses, and over 3.08 lakh repeated email addresses. These findings suggest that the IT controls promised by the ministry in May 2023 were not yet fully effective.
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Same photos
The auditor also flagged instances where the same photographs were used for beneficiaries across different states.
For example, the audit noted that Neelima Moving Pictures (NMP), a proprietary business agency not registered with the Registrar of Companies, had awarded skill certifications to 33,493 participants across 21 job roles in eight states from January to November 2020 through the Media and Entertainment SSC. By the time of the audit (October 2022), NMP was no longer in existence, reportedly shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under PMKVY-RPL guidelines, high-resolution photographs and videos of certification batches are required. However, analysis of 24 batches revealed repeated photographic evidence across states. For instance, the same photo of beneficiaries was used for batch number 57241 in Gaya, Bihar, and batch number 67518 in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh. The CAG report flagged multiple such violations.
The ministry, however, said that no financial irregularities were found as payments were made through DBT scheme.
The report also noted that several training centres were found to be closed during the audit period. “…During inspection of TCs, it was found that three out of the 10 TCs in Bihar and one of the 17 in Odisha were closed at the time of survey conducted,” it reads.
Only 41% placed, placements limited to few sectors
The auditor further flagged that only 41 percent of the candidates got work after completing training and certification. Only 23.18 lakh of the 56.14 lakh candidates certified under the scheme’s short-term training (STT) and special projects (SP) components secured placements.
STT involves industry-relevant skill training to school and college dropouts or unemployed youth. SPs focus on targeted skill development in specific sectors, geographies, or for some groups.
“The audit observed that ignoring the Qualification Pack (QP) minimum criteria during training and the absence of a clear implementation strategy likely contributed to low placement rates,” the report said. Qualification packs are comprehensive documents that define the skills, knowledge and performance standards required for a specific job role.
The report further highlighted that most certifications and placements were concentrated in the top five sectors, with 31.70 lakh certifications (56.47 percent of all) and 13.46 lakh placements (58.08 percent), led by ‘self-employed tailors’ in the apparel sector.
In contrast, 19 other sectors together accounted for just 1.74 lakh placements, each contributing less than one percent of the total.
The audit pointed to several reasons for low placements, including the exclusion of four high-placement sectors—plumbing, logistics, healthcare and leather—from PMKVY 3.0. The lack of employer mapping and industry tie-ups in Bihar, absence of employment plans and unassessed training partners in Odisha, and missing state-level records in Uttar Pradesh were among other factors cited.
The ministry, in its response to CAG, partly attributed the low placement rates to economic uncertainty following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Age and education criteria ignored
The CAG report said candidates were enrolled and certified while ignoring age, education, and work-experience criteria prescribed in the guidelines and qualification packs.
For example, qualification packs for ‘group farming practitioner’ and ‘self-employed tailor’ required minimum ages of 20 and 18 years, respectively. Yet, 52,214 and 40,953 candidates below these ages were certified.
Similarly, for driver/chauffeur roles, a minimum age of 18 years and a valid driving licence were mandatory, but 1,142 underage candidates were trained and certified.
The ministry, in its response, attributed over- or under-age training to system errors or candidates finding value in the training. For underage driver/chauffeur candidates, it noted data-entry oversights by training partners. The ministry assured that future PMKVY phases would use Aadhaar-based registration with system checks for minimum age and educational qualifications as per each job role.
Analysis of 60,68,523 candidates certified in roles requiring education beyond the ninth standard revealed that 6,77,807 candidates (11.17 percent) had missing educational data, and 8,09,046 candidates (13.33 percent) did not meet the minimum educational requirement.
For job roles requiring prior technical qualifications, out of 1,23,533 certified candidates, 1,05,493 (85.40 percent) had only basic literacy or regular education, and information was missing for 14,122 candidates (11.43 percent).
“It was noted that 40,897 candidates certified in job-roles requiring formal education from 9th class and above did not have the required minimum entry level qualification. Similarly, 4,361 candidates certified in job-roles requiring prior technical education did not have the requisite qualification,” the report said.
Pending payouts, unutilised funds
The CAG report noted that PMKVY 3.0 allowed implementing agencies to utilise unspent balances from PMKVY 2.0. However, as of July 2023, Rs 337.16 crore remained unutilised across the country, raising concerns over fund management.
In Bihar, of Rs 36.82 crore released, only Rs 5.96 crore was utilised by March 2024 due to lack of training centres, absence of skill-gap studies, and Covid-19 disruptions. Odisha used Rs 7.39 crore of Rs 27.71 crore, and refunded the unutilised amount of Rs 20.33 crore along with interest of Rs 6.39 crore to the ministry. Maharashtra had Rs 18.94 crore unspent from Rs 136.51 crore.
The report stated that out of 95.91 lakh candidates, 61.14 lakh (63.75 percent) have been paid through Direct Benefit Transfer. “The details indicate that due to insufficient information, pay-outs to more than 34 lakh certified candidates still have not been made even after the completion of the respective PMKVY phases,” the CAG stated. Payouts are monetary incentives linked to certification.
This is an updated version of the report.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
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