CAG rips into PM Kaushal Scheme over weak relevance, poor placements and lax oversight.
MUMBAI, dec 28 (The CONNECT) – The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana stands hollowed out by two core failures: a persistent mismatch between training and labour-market demand, and the inability to credibly demonstrate that skilling translated into jobs.
A performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India shows that these were not peripheral shortcomings but structural defects that shaped the scheme’s design, execution and outcomes across its first three phases between 2015 and 2022.
The mismatch between training and demand runs through the programme at every level. PMKVY was conceived as the flagship instrument to operationalise India’s skilling policy, yet it was implemented without a long-term strategic or perspective plan, despite the Ministry’s own acknowledgement that skilling would be a continuous national priority. Instead of a stable framework anchored in identified skill gaps, the scheme unfolded in successive phases, each governed by fresh guidelines, revised targets and altered implementation arrangements.
In the absence of a national skill development plan aggregating district- and state-level demand, training allocations were driven largely by administrative convenience and the availability of training providers rather than by labour-market evidence.
The audit demonstrates that this misalignment was not abstract but quantifiable. The National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship projected the need to skill over 40 crore persons by 2022 across sectors and states. Against this backdrop, PMKVY targeted only 1.32 crore candidates, a modest contribution even on its own terms. More importantly, the distribution of training effort bore little resemblance to the pattern of projected demand. Sectors accounting for a majority of incremental workforce requirements received a disproportionately small share of PMKVY’s training effort, while other sectors with relatively limited projected demand absorbed a large share of certifications.
This divergence was repeated across states, with training volumes often concentrated in regions that did not correspond to the highest identified skill shortages.
The distortion became sharper at the micro level. Despite more than 1,400 approved job roles, nearly 40 per cent of short-term and special-project certifications were concentrated in just ten roles. In several sectors, training effectively collapsed into a single dominant job profile, chosen without documented micro-level skill-gap analysis or systematic assessment of market demand. The audit records that even the Ministry later attributed weak placement outcomes to arbitrary job-role selection that was not grounded in evidence. The scheme thus scaled outputs rapidly, but did so in a way that thinned relevance and weakened its capacity to function as a labour-market intervention.
This structural disconnect fed directly into the second core failure: the inability to credibly establish employment outcomes. Of the 56.14 lakh candidates certified under short-term and special-project components, only 41 per cent were reported as placed. Even this limited outcome could not be uniformly verified. The audit found instances where placement documents submitted by training partners were incorrect, and noted the absence of robust mechanisms to independently validate employment claims. In several states, there was no reliable system to track whether candidates remained employed beyond initial reporting, reducing placement figures to static snapshots rather than meaningful indicators of livelihood outcomes.
Targeting failures compounded the problem. PMKVY was intended primarily for unemployed youth and school or college dropouts, yet the audit shows that candidates were enrolled despite not meeting prescribed age, education or work-experience criteria. Mechanisms to verify whether beneficiaries genuinely belonged to the intended target groups were either weak or non-existent. As a result, neither enrolment figures nor placement claims could be confidently linked to the scheme’s stated social objectives, further eroding the credibility of outcomes.
Recognition of Prior Learning, promoted as a rapid pathway to certify existing skills, exposed additional weaknesses. The audit documents serious irregularities in the RPL-Best-in-Class Employers component, including weak scrutiny of proposals, unreliable documentation of training and assessment, absence of demonstrable employer–employee relationships in several cases, and ineffective monitoring by the implementing agency. Certifications were issued in contexts where neither skill acquisition nor workplace validation could be independently established, undermining the integrity of the credential itself and raising questions about the value of certification as a signal to employers.
These outcome failures were rooted in deeper governance and control deficiencies. PMKVY was implemented without an effective framework for convergence across India’s fragmented skilling ecosystem, despite the Ministry’s mandate to coordinate skill development efforts across central ministries and states. Dozens of parallel schemes continued to operate with overlapping objectives, inconsistent norms and non-integrated databases. Even where policy decisions had been taken to divide sectoral responsibilities among ministries, implementation diverged from agreed frameworks, leading to duplication rather than synergy. The absence of comprehensive data integration meant that neither policymakers nor auditors could form a unified picture of national skilling outcomes.
Financial management weaknesses reinforced this fragmentation. The audit highlights delays in fund release, underutilisation at the state level, incorrect estimation of financial requirements, and violations of receipt and payment rules. Funds earmarked for district skill committees were not transferred in full, limiting local capacity for mobilisation and monitoring. Administrative expenses were overcharged in earlier phases, and interest earned on PMKVY grants was retained by the implementing agency until flagged by audit, prompting post-facto recovery. These lapses pointed to weak oversight by the Ministry over agencies handling substantial public funds and raised concerns about financial propriety.
Data governance and monitoring failures further diluted accountability. For much of its operational life, PMKVY functioned without a formal data-retention policy, despite relying heavily on digital platforms to manage enrolment, attendance, assessment and certification. Critical records, including photographic and video evidence of training and documentation of candidate eligibility, were not uniformly retained. Controls over electronic identities, bank details and attendance records were inconsistently enforced. Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance systems were either absent or non-functional in several training centres inspected by auditors, weakening safeguards against ghost trainees and inflated reporting.
Institutional capacity at the state and district levels proved uneven and fragile. While state skill development missions and district skill committees were introduced to localise planning and align training with local demand, many lacked dedicated staff, infrastructure or authority. In some states, district-level convergence and monitoring mechanisms were either not established or remained largely on paper. Subsequent changes to the scheme further marginalised state and district institutions, narrowing their role even as the scheme’s scale expanded. The result was a centralised programme dependent on weak local execution and limited ground-level verification.
The regulatory architecture intended to assure quality and standardisation also lagged behind the scheme’s expansion. The apex vocational regulator was still evolving during much of the audit period and performed only limited functions. Standards for training, assessment and certification were inconsistently enforced across sectors and implementing agencies, contributing to variability in quality and outcomes. Without a strong, fully operational regulator, rapid scaling proceeded without commensurate assurance of credibility.
In its response, the Ministry has pointed to reforms introduced in the fourth phase of PMKVY, including Aadhaar-based verification, post-certification tracking and migration to a unified digital platform. The audit acknowledges these steps but underscores that assurances of future correction cannot substitute for accountability for past expenditure or for outcomes that were never credibly demonstrated. Structural weaknesses identified across planning, targeting, implementation, monitoring and convergence remain relevant benchmarks against which any new phase must be judged.
Taken together, the audit’s findings suggest that PMKVY’s principal shortcoming was not a lack of intent or resources but a failure of design discipline. Training was scaled without being anchored firmly to demand, outcomes were reported without being robustly verified, and governance systems struggled to keep pace with ambition. The CAG’s recommendations converge on a clear corrective logic: align training strictly with verified skill gaps, ground job-role selection in evidence, enforce rigorous financial and data controls, strengthen monitoring and oversight, and achieve genuine convergence across schemes. Without these corrections, the audit implicitly warns, India’s flagship skilling effort risks remaining an exercise in counting certificates rather than building durable livelihoods.
