Skill Ministry blacklists 178 training partners amid corruption cloud

The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) has entered the spotlight after the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) announced the blacklisting of 178 training partners (TPs) and training centres (TCs) for alleged large-scale irregularities. The official letter dated 30 October directed all state missions and regional directorates to halt activity with the defaulting entities and initiate recovery of funds.

Foundations of the blacklisting include inflated billing, attendance records showing absent trainees and some centres that reportedly existed only on paper, according to ministry documents. The largest number of blacklisted entities falls in Uttar Pradesh (59), followed by Delhi (25), Madhya Pradesh (24) and Rajasthan (20).

Scope, suspected modus operandi

Under PMKVY 4.0, launched in 2022, over 1.64 crore individuals have been trained and ₹1,538 crore allocated for FY 2024-25. The scheme designed to provide skill training to youth is now seeing fresh scrutiny after repeated complaints of shell entities and bogus trainees surfaced.

In one case, an attendance sheet listed names of “trainees” who did not attend, while in another, the registered training partner's name differed from the actual centre operating on-ground, raising accountability concerns. Officials found that in 122 of the 178 blacklisted cases, the TP and TC identities did not match.

From the ministry’s perspective, the magnitude of the irregularities triggered legal action, including the filing of FIRs and fund recovery. One state mission director reported having frozen operations of several centres in a district and handed over the case to local police.

Response efforts, oversight challenges

The MSDE’s communication requested state mission heads to examine future project proposals under all government skilling schemes in view of the discrepancies observed. The NSDC, tasked with implementing the scheme, has remained silent on the total amount of funds under suspicion and the scale of recoveries.

Experts say the blacklisting, while a strong step, highlights broader weaknesses in monitoring, accreditation and ground-level verification of training centres. Without improved digital audits and real-time verification of trainee attendance, such schemes remain vulnerable to abuse.

States with larger numbers of blacklisted partners are now being required to conduct fresh inspections and certifications before disbursing further payments. The MSDE-NSDC duo have also begun exploring centralised dashboards to track physical and virtual training sessions.

Despite this wave of action, several regional mission directors said the blacklist reached them only this week and they await detailed inspection reports and documents from the NSDC. Until the backend systems are fully operational, training activities remain frozen at many centres.