New Delhi: India’s flagship digital skilling programmes designed to make workers employable in electronics, information technology (IT), and emerging technology sectors are failing to translate training into jobs, with gaps in placement, monitoring, and even basic beneficiary integrity, a new audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General has found.
India’s CAG has flagged beneficiary fraud risks, near-zero earnings for digital entrepreneurs, and a Rs 107 crore enforcement failure across the Ministry of Electronics and IT and DoT in its report numbered 5 of 2026, published in April.
MeitY skill schemes: Duplicate certifications, 25% placement
The CAG audit of three skill development schemes run by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) from 2018-19 to 2022-23—Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) Phase I and Phase II, Skill Development in Aspirational Districts (SDYAD), and FutureSkills PRIME (Programme for Re-skilling/Up-skilling of IT Manpower for Employability—found that while enrolment numbers looked healthy on paper, actual outcomes were thin.
Across the ESDM schemes, 4.88 lakh candidates were trained, but only 3.40 lakh—approximately 70 percent—were certified. Of those certified, only 25 percent were placed.
The audit found 6,256 candidates enrolled in 43 courses that resulted in zero placements.
The ministry had prescribed a “place and train” model in its 2015 scheme guidelines to ensure jobs were lined up before training began. It was implemented only from July 2022.
On beneficiary integrity, auditors noticed 446 instances in a database of 4.78 lakh candidates where individuals with identical names, dates of birth, photographs, and parental details were registered under different IDs and certified more than once.
In one documented case, a candidate in Assam received certification for two service-sector courses within five weeks under two different registration numbers, with differing mothers’ names on record, but the same photo. In another case, a candidate in Uttar Pradesh was certified twice for the same course—solar panel installation technician—within 13 days by the same training partner.
The ministry responded that only 0.02 percent of the records showed such anomalies.
Auditors were given access to only 14 of the 446 flagged certificates.
Government rules require trainees under skill development schemes to be tracked for one year after certification.
The ESDM schemes tracked candidates for only three months, in violation of the common norms notified in 2015.
Reimbursement of Rs 8.93 crore in course fees to training partners remained pending for up to 42 months as of March 2024. By June 2025, Rs 4.79 crore was still outstanding.
In the SDYAD scheme, designed for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and economically weaker women in 81 aspirational districts, no training partners had been found for 21 districts, as of March 2024, resulting in zero registrations in 17 of them.
The registration portal lacked a facility to upload supporting documents, such as caste certificates or income proofs, leaving the scheme open to invalid entries. Manual invoice processing by training partners—in violation of guidelines requiring an online system—was flagged. The online invoice portal was described, in May 2025, as being “in the final stage”.
Under FutureSkills PRIME, the paid ‘deep skilling’ courses achieved only 12 percent of enrolment targets, compared to the free equivalent’s 687 percent. The audit noted that the industry did not recognise National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) certifications under the scheme as merit, reducing motivation to pay for or complete courses.
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Common service centres: 86% operators earn under Rs 500
The CAG audit of the common services centres (CSC) 2.0 project—an e-governance initiative started in 2015 with Rs 475.11 crore to deliver digital and public services at the Gram Panchayat (village council) level by establishing a centre in every Gram Panchayat—found that while the network expanded to 5.7 lakh centres by early 2025, it is operating with a structural affordability crisis at its base.
An analysis of transaction data from 2018-19 to 2022-23 revealed that nearly 86 percent of rural village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs)—individuals who run the centres at their own expense—earned less than ₹500 per month. Between 7.5 and 18.5 percent reported zero earnings.
The conservative cost of setting up a CSC is estimated at Rs 50,000, implying a payback period of over eight years for most operators. Average monthly earnings across states and Union Territories ranged between Rs 76 and Rs 499.
Nearly 35 to 47 percent of CSCs remained inactive during the audit period. Physical verification of 315 sampled centres found 81 had shut down.
Of the 231 open centres, 88 percent were not providing Aadhaar or Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) services, 63 percent were not offering e-District services, and 47 percent were not providing banking, despite these being among citizens’ most requested services.
Of the 94,419 CSCs operated by women, 54.64 percent were inactive as of March 2023. No specific guidelines were ever issued to incentivise or protect women village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs), as the project guidelines had envisaged.
CSC Special Purpose Vehicle (CSC-SPV), without ministry approval, made a Rs 1,499 training course mandatory for all aspiring VLE applicants between 2020 and 2023 and collected Rs 108.89 crore in fees during this period. The ministry confirmed to auditors that the course “did not have its approval”.
Physical verification of CSCs by CSC-SPV consistently fell short of targets: only 13.61 percent of the target was verified by March 2020, rising to 56.29 percent by March 2023, leaving large swathes of the network unverified. The project review and steering group (PRSG), mandated to meet quarterly, held its first meeting in April 2018—more than two years after the project launched. The financial sustainability of VLEs was raised as a concern for the first time at the eighth meeting, in March 2022, six years into the project.
“Strengthening state involvement, ensuring financial viability of VLEs, improving oversight and streamlining grievance handling are essential for CSCs to deliver on their promise of accessible and sustainable last-mile e-governance,” the report concluded.
Telecom: Rs 107cr in uncollected fines, towers dark
The DoT imposed fines of Rs 143.09 crore on telecom operators across 22 licensed service area offices for failures in subscriber verification between 2022-23 and 2024-25. It recovered just Rs 36.02 crore—25 percent of the total—leaving Rs 107.07 crore outstanding as of March 2025.
Of this, Rs 86.31 crore is owed by companies under insolvency proceedings, Rs 8.33 crore is under litigation, and Rs 12.35 crore represents undisputed dues—including amounts owed by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL).
The ministry told auditors that DoT and its field offices “have been pursuing the matter with BSNL”, but auditors found that BSNL’s own financial statements do not record the customer acquisition form (CAF) penalties as liabilities, treating them instead as contingent liabilities on the grounds that they are disputed.
“The persistence of high unrecovered dues undermines the deterrent effect of the penalty framework and signals enforcement gaps in recovery,” the report said.
A separate finding concerns the Digital Bharat Nidhi (DBN), which, in 2017, contracted Bharti Airtel to commission mobile towers across Assam and Sikkim by June 2019. The deadline was extended to October 2020. By April 2021, only 431 of the 756 approved sites were operational. The target was later revised down to 562 sites, but 124 sites remain uncommissioned as of April 2025. Penalties of Rs 19.47 crore were levied, and Rs 8.49 crore remained unpaid for more than four years after the roll-out period expired.
BSNL tower estate: Rs 59 cr in idle material & inert sites
The audit of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL’s) tower infrastructure for 2018-19 to 2022-23 found that title deeds for 36 percent of land parcels on which towers stand were not registered in BSNL’s name.
Another 27 percent of leasehold tower sites were operating despite expired agreements, exposing the company to legal risk.
Tower material worth Rs 59.77 crore lay unused. Eighty-one towers, valued at Rs 11.13 crore, sat idle since installation—some for seven years—across three circles.
BSNL delayed handing over 1,092 sites to telecom service providers, which caused a revenue loss of Rs 10.87 crore. As many as 1,740 tower sites remained non-functional for periods extending up to 16 years.
The audit covered the period ending March 2024. Total recoveries during FY 2023-24 amounted to Rs 411.92 crore, of which Rs 83.95 crore had been effected, it pointed out.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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