Internship Programme Of The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (MoEFCC)(IPWCCB)

The Bureau advertises no application window, and the myScheme entry leaves both of its date fields empty. What the guidelines fix instead is a rule for counting backwards from the month you want to start.

Each programme starts on the first of the month, so the choice inside a phase is between two start dates, and the five-week rule is about arrival at Bhikaji Cama Place rather than the date you post it.

One caution before you count. The guidelines carry no date, no revision number and no cycle year on any of their three pages, and the Bureau's own domain, wccb.gov.in, does not resolve to a website on which a current phase could be checked. Treat the calendar above as the rule the Bureau has published rather than as confirmation that a particular phase is open, and get the phase confirmed through your institution before the paperwork goes anywhere.

Four conditions have to hold together, and three of them are about your circumstances rather than your subject. You must be an Indian citizen, you must not be in a regular job in either the public or the private sector, and you must not be more than 30 years of age. On top of that you have to be pursuing a graduation, post-graduation or diploma programme in one of the four subject routes above (guidelines, eligibility).

The employment bar is the one that catches people out. It is written against holding a regular job at all, not against holding a job in a related field, so a full-time employee studying part-time is outside the scheme even where the degree is in wildlife science. Nothing in the guidelines sets a marks floor, a minimum year of study, or a domicile condition, and there is no income test anywhere in the document.

Neither the Bureau's guidelines nor the myScheme record publishes a separate list of who is barred, so the four eligibility conditions carry the whole weight: a foreign national, anyone already in regular employment, anyone past their thirtieth year, and anyone whose current programme sits outside wildlife-related subjects, zoology, botany or law is turned away at the eligibility stage rather than at selection.

The month you are admitted for is the month you get. The guidelines fix each programme at one month, running from the first of the month to its end, and give the Bureau no clause for extending it or for carrying a completed intern into the next phase. Someone who does the summer phase and wants the winter one goes back to the start: a fresh application in the prescribed format, a fresh recommendation from the head of the institution, and the same five-week posting deadline ahead of the new start date (guidelines, duration and how to apply).

What an intern earns here is a certificate from the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, and it is issued on two conditions rather than one: satisfactory completion of the internship, and submission of a report at the end of it. Miss the report and the completion is not enough on the guidelines' own wording.

Money is settled plainly in the terms of engagement, which state that no remuneration shall be paid to the intern for their internship at the Bureau. The guidelines are also silent on travel, accommodation and any contingency allowance, and no figure for any of them appears in the document, so an intern posted away from home carries those costs. The Bureau publishes no cap on how many interns it takes in a phase either.

The Bureau's own check list runs to five items: the duly filled application form, self-attested copies of two proofs of identity with one being the Aadhaar card, a curriculum vitae, the recommendation letter of the head of the institution on official letterhead, and self-attested certificates of the educational qualifications named in the form (guidelines, check list).

The form behind that first item asks for more than a name and a course. It carries an attested photograph, seventeen numbered fields including institution contact person and institutional email, a qualification table with course, institution, year, subject and marks in per cent, details of projects and internships already completed, present status, extracurricular activities and the duration you are proposing. The second page is not finished once you have signed it. Underneath your own certification sits an authentication block in which the head of the institution certifies that the information is correct, recommends you for the internship, and adds designation, office address and office seal (WCCB internship application form). Getting that seal takes an office visit at most colleges, which is the part worth starting early.

Applications go by post, in the prescribed format given in the annexure to the guidelines, addressed to The Additional Director, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, 2nd floor, Trikoot-I, Bhikaji Cama Place, New Delhi-110066. The envelope has to be superscribed with the words "Application for Internship for Month/Year", and the completed application must reach that office five weeks before the proposed date on which the internship begins (guidelines, how to apply). The myScheme record for the scheme agrees, listing the application mode as offline and carrying no application URL at all (myScheme, Internship Programme Of The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau).

Tracking a sent application is where expectations need adjusting. There is no portal, no reference number and no status page. What the guidelines promise is narrow: the Selection Committee scrutinises the applications received, and the selected candidate will be intimated accordingly. The document also writes an appeal out of existence: the Committee's word is stated to be final and binding, with queries about it expressly not entertained. Silence is therefore the whole of the news an unselected applicant gets, so the precautions that matter here are postal ones, which is to say a service that returns proof of delivery and a copy of the sealed form kept back for yourself.

Selection is a paper scrutiny by a committee, not an interview or a test. The Selection Committee scrutinises the applications received, its composition is decided by the Additional Director, and while selecting candidates it gives due importance to the academic performance of the applicant (guidelines, selection procedure). The Committee meets twice in a year, which lines up with the two internship phases.

Where you end up is decided after that, not by you. The guidelines list the Bureau's headquarters at Delhi, five regional offices at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Jabalpur, and sub-regional offices at Cochin and Guwahati, and state that the intern may be attached to any of those offices. The application form does let you record a preference across New Delhi, Mumbai, Cochin, Chennai, Jabalpur, Kolkata and Guwahati (application form, preferred location), but it is recorded as a preference and the guidelines reserve the posting decision.

Worth noting that the Bureau is larger than the posting clause suggests. The opening page of the same document describes three sub-regional offices, at Guwahati, Amritsar and Cochin, and five border units at Ramanathapuram, Gorakhpur, Motihari, Nathula and Moreh. Amritsar and the border units appear in neither the posting clause nor the form's preference line, so an intern should read the shorter list as the one that governs.

The engagement terms are short and they are worth reading before the application goes out, because two of them bear on academic work. An intern has to sign an undertaking on non-disclosure of any information that comes to their knowledge during the internship, and an intern is not authorised to use data collected or information gained at the Bureau in any academic publication or research project without the prior approval of the Additional Director (guidelines, terms and conditions of engagement). Given that the work is wildlife crime intelligence, that restriction is doing real work.

The rest of the terms set the reporting line and the limits. The intern undertakes activity as directed by the concerned Regional Deputy Director in the regional offices, or by the Additional Director at the Bureau headquarters. WCCB may terminate an internship at any point without giving reasons, as it deems fit. And the guidelines state in their own words that joining or completing the programme is not an assurance for a job in the organisation.

One postal address does the work for this programme, and it is the same one the application is sent to: The Additional Director, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau, 2nd floor, Trikoot-I, Bhikaji Cama Place, New Delhi-110066 (WCCB Internship Programme guidelines). No telephone number or email address for the internship is printed in the guidelines or on the application form, and the Bureau sits under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which lists it among the boards attached to the ministry (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change).