Explained: How PMKVY Became a Certification Factory

New Delhi (ABC Live): For nearly a decade, India’s skilling policy rested on a clear promise. At its core, large public training programmes, backed by digital platforms and direct benefit transfers, were expected to convert India’s demographic surplus into stable jobs. Therefore, skills became a central pillar of economic policy.

In this context, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) emerged as the flagship instrument. The scheme sought to certify millions of youth, standardise vocational training, and link skills with employment across States and sectors.

Between 2015 and 2022, PMKVY expanded rapidly. The government released more than ₹10,000 crore. Moreover, it certified over 1.10 crore candidates. At the same time, it deployed national digital systems—from the Skill India Portal to Aadhaar-linked payments—to track implementation.

On paper, these numbers suggested scale and speed. However, scale alone does not establish success.

What Public Finance Demands Beyond Scale

In public spending, outcomes must be verifiable. Similarly, controls must function in real time. Above all, payments must rest on proof rather than assumptions. Consequently, digital platforms matter only when authorities enforce them consistently.

This is precisely where the performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) becomes critical.

Rather than highlighting isolated lapses, the audit identifies a systemic drift. Over time, PMKVY shifted away from skill formation and toward certificate generation. Meanwhile, attendance controls weakened. Simultaneously, assessments slowed. Eventually, placement checks lost rigour.

As a result, the scheme increasingly measured what was easy to count instead of what was necessary to prove.

For a broader context, readers may also refer to ABC Live’s audit-led investigation of infrastructure outcomes:
👉 https://abclive.in/2025/11/08/explained-how-cag-and-abc-live-rate-indias-solar-parks/

1. A Flagship Scheme Without a Long-Term Strategy

At the outset, PMKVY was conceived as a continuing institutional scheme. However, the audit shows that the Ministry never prepared a long-term perspective plan or the promised National Skill Development Plan (NSDP) during the first three phases.

Instead, PMKVY operated in three disconnected phases. Each time, new guidelines, targets, and priorities replaced the previous framework. Consequently, continuity weakened and outcome tracking suffered.

CAG finding:
The Ministry implemented skill training without a long-term strategy to systematically address identified skill gaps.

Why this matters:
A programme without a roadmap can track spending. In contrast, it cannot reliably deliver outcomes.

2. Training Where Jobs Were Not: Skill-Gap Misalignment

At the national level, India’s Skill Development Policy projected a requirement of 40.29 crore skilled persons by 2022. Against this backdrop, PMKVY targeted only 1.32 crore candidates—less than four per cent of the projected demand.

More importantly, training did not follow labour-market needs.

Table 1: Skill Demand vs PMKVY Training

Specifically:

• Over 40% of training focused on Retail, Electronics, and Apparel.

• Meanwhile, high-demand sectors such as Construction, Logistics, Tourism, and Furniture remained underserved.

• At the same time, several labour-surplus States received disproportionate allocations.

Therefore, PMKVY’s training effort frequently diverged from actual job demand.

3. Micro-Level Blindness: Few Job Roles, Mass Certifications

At the job-role level, the skew became sharper.

Out of 724 job roles, nearly 40% of certifications are concentrated in just 10 roles. For example, healthcare training is centred on General Duty Assistants, while IT training focused on Domestic Data Entry Operators. Similarly, green jobs clustered around sanitation roles.

Notably, the Ministry itself accepted that arbitrary job-role selection contributed to poor placement outcomes.

CAG finding:
The absence of micro-level skill-gap data led to concentration in limited job roles regardless of employability potential.

4. AEBAS and Attendance Integrity: Compliance in Name Only

To address ghost trainees, PMKVY mandated the Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) from 1 April 2018. Accordingly, biometric attendance became the legal precondition for assessment, certification, and payments.

Yet, the audit found near-systemic non-compliance.

Table 2: AEBAS Compliance After Mandate

In simple terms, nearly 87% of batches lacked verifiable attendance.

5. Assessments Delayed by Years, Not Days

Under PMKVY rules, assessments and certifications were to follow quickly after training. Instead, the audit recorded extreme delays.

Table 3: Assessment and Certification Delays

Consequently, certificates often arrived long after the training relevance faded.

6. Placement: The Weakest Link

In outcome terms, placement performance remained weak.

Out of 56.14 lakh candidates certified, only 23.18 lakh (41%) secured placements. Moreover, the audit found that incorrect placement documents were accepted in Kerala, exposing fragile verification systems.

Table 4: Placement Outcomes (Selected States)

As a result, certification numbers overstated employment outcomes.

ABC Live Editorial Note

Importantly, this investigation does not challenge the need for skill training.

Instead, it examines how weak enforcement converted a results-driven scheme into a numbers-driven system.

Ultimately, the audit shows that PMKVY’s failure lies in enforcement, not intent.

7. RPL-BICE: “Best-in-Class” Without Proof

Similarly, Recognition of Prior Learning—especially RPL-BICE—emerged as a high-risk area. Certifications lacked verifiable employer-employee relationships. In addition, monitoring records appeared unreliable.

CAG finding:
NSDC’s monitoring of RPL-BICE projects was ineffective.

8. Financial Governance: Control Gaps Multiply

Although the audit does not allege corruption, it documents serious control failures.

Table 5: Key Financial Issues

Therefore, financial oversight failed to match programme scale.

Legal Interpretation: Why Non-AEBAS Compliance Weakens DBT

Legally, DBT under PMKVY is conditional public expenditure. Hence, attendance verification operates as a condition precedent.

When biometric attendance is missing:

• Eligibility remains unproven

• Financial propriety weakens

• DBT confirms identity, not training delivery

Accordingly, DBT cannot replace proof of training.

Potential Audit Consequences

If mandatory controls remain unenforced, audit consequences follow:

• Expenditure may be classified as irregular

• Recoveries may be recommended

• Responsibility may attach to approving officials

• Parliamentary scrutiny intensifies

Conclusion: Counting Certificates Is Not Skilling

Ultimately, the audit leads to one unavoidable conclusion. PMKVY scaled certificates, not employability.

Unless India enforces biometric controls, completes timely assessments, verifies placements, and strengthens financial governance, skill reform risks becoming an administrative illusion.

Therefore, PMKVY’s future relevance depends on one decisive shift:
from counting certificates to proving outcomes.

How We Verified This Report

Finally, every fact, table, and conclusion in this report is drawn exclusively from the official CAG Performance Audit on PMKVY (Report No. 20 of 2025).
The full audit report is available here:
🔗 https://cag.gov.in/en/audit-report/download/123641

ABC Live introduced no third-party estimates or datasets. Instead, all interpretations follow audit principles on conditional expenditure and financial propriety.