Internship Scheme(ISDELHI)

Overview

About ISDELHI

The scheme named plainly as "Internship" here belongs to the Department of Forests and Wildlife, Government of NCT of Delhi, and to no other office. It attaches a student to one of the department's own sections for a short, fixed stretch of work under a serving forest officer, and it pays nothing for that time. The department does not date the scheme on its portal; The Indian Express reported in August 2023 that the internship portal was inaugurated at the fourth Van Mahotsav ceremony at the Polo Ground of Delhi University (The Indian Express, 7 August 2023).

Forestry is one tenth of what is actually on offer. The department lists ten domains: conservation of the Delhi Ridge, forestry management, planning and monitoring, protection of forests and its resources, wildlife management, training, policy and legal issues, human resource management, information technology and accounting (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). A law student monitors ongoing cases and helps draft status reports; a computer science student may be put on the department's websites or on a GIS build; a commerce student can land in internal audit of accounts. The forest itself is only one route in.

Nothing about it runs like a mass recruitment drive. There is no advertised season and no common closing date: you nominate the period you want, preferably three months ahead, and a serving officer has to be free to supervise you through it (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). What earns the approval is set out below.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

There is no annual calendar to wait for. The department publishes no opening date and no closing date, and the scheme record carries neither, so applications run on a rolling basis against the period you nominate rather than against a common deadline.

What shapes your window instead is the duration rule, and it pulls in two directions. Duration is decided by the department based on the domain selected and shall not exceed 90 days in normal circumstances, yet the domain list attaches a minimum of its own to nine of the ten (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal).

Read the table against the ceiling before you nominate a period. On the portal's own numbers, four rows, Ridge conservation, forest protection, wildlife management and human resource management, start at three months and are capped at 90 days in normal circumstances, so there is very little room between the floor and the ceiling on those four. Policy and legal issues and information technology start at two months. Only forestry management, planning and monitoring, and training open at one month, and those are the realistic choices for a student with a single vacation to spend. Accounting is the one row the department leaves without a stated minimum.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

You have to be in study and you have to be an adult. The department opens the training only to students of recognised schools, institutions and universities, and requires that the applicant has attained 18 years of age (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal).

Beyond that, the qualification routes are drawn by subject rather than by degree level, and two details sit outside the summary most write-ups carry. The department's own portal lists MBA under the commerce, economics and management route and LLM under the law route, so a management or law postgraduate is inside the door rather than outside it. Its FAQ adds a floor for anyone mid-degree: a student pursuing a bachelor's degree must have passed the first-year examinations (Department of Forests and Wildlife, internship FAQ).

School leavers are genuinely covered, and not as an afterthought. Higher secondary in the science stream qualifies for the science and forestry route, and the fourth route takes higher secondary in the science and commerce streams on its own. Read the stream, though, before you read the year: the published routes reach a Class 12 pass from science or commerce, and no route is written for the humanities streams.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The scheme record carries no exclusion list, but the department's application rules carry two hard bars, and both end an application rather than weaken it.

Anyone who has already completed the internship scheme in this department will not be entertained a second time. Applications that are incomplete, or that do not fulfil the criteria laid down, are summarily rejected rather than returned for correction (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). There is no re-submission window written anywhere in the scheme, so a form sent in a hurry is the whole of your chance.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing here renews. An internship runs once, ends, and cannot be taken again by the same person under the bar described above.

The one route to extra time is not a renewal but an extension, and it is not applied for. Where significant work has been done by an intern and can be taken to a logical conclusion, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests may grant an extension of a maximum of one month (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). That judgment sits with the office, on the strength of work already delivered.

What you get

Award & benefits

No stipend is paid. The department states it flatly, and nothing in the scheme converts into pay, a fellowship or a travel allowance in cash.

What the intern gets instead is a certificate carrying a grade based on performance, plus the working support the assignment needs, which the department describes as facilities like transportation to the work site and printing of study material (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). For fieldwork on the Ridge or a wildlife census, transport to site is the cost that would otherwise fall on the student, so it is worth confirming with your Guide at the start.

The graded certificate carries one feature worth knowing about when you list it on a CV. The department runs a public verification page where an issued certificate can be checked by its certificate number and the holder's name (Department of Forests and Wildlife, certificate verification), so an employer can confirm it without writing to the department.

• Experience Certificate: At the end of the successful completion of the internship, the interns will be awarded a "Certificate” along with a grading based on the performance of the intern.
• Logistics & Support: Facilities like transportation to the work site, printing of study material, etc. required for successful completion of the internship shall be provided by the Department.
• Stipend: No stipend shall be paid.

What to prepare

Documents required

One document decides this application, and it is the one you write yourself. The Statement of Purpose runs to no more than 1000 words and has to cover three things: why the field interests you, how your skill set is relevant to the domain you picked, and what you expect to contribute in it (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). Preference is given to applicants with a clear one, so treat the proof of enrolment and the identity papers as clearances and the Statement of Purpose as the application itself.

Two papers are easy to miss because they belong to different moments. Supporting evidence of any additional skill you claim is optional but is invited with the form, and it is the only place a GIS certificate or a field survey course counts. The second one is not wanted with the application at all: once selected, a candidate reporting for joining has to carry a signed note from a supervisor, head of department or principal that confirms their standing in the institution and raises no objection to the exact internship period they were selected for (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). Chasing that signature before an approval exists wastes the weeks an institution takes to give it.

Account creation adds its own small requirement. Registration on the department's e-Forest system asks for an identity document from its listed set, a Delhi address with pincode, and a photograph of no more than 300kb (e-Forest registration, Department of Forests and Wildlife).

Step by step

How to apply

Applications are taken online only, and the route runs through two different addresses on the department's own domain. First create an account on the shared e-Forest registration system at dpta.eforest.delhi.gov.in, choosing the Individual category, since the same account system serves the department's other citizen services. Then sign in at the internship portal and file the application there (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal).

Timing is part of the form. The department asks that the application be made preferably three months in advance of the period you want, and that the period itself be stated clearly on the form. You may name a maximum of three disciplines, and you must indicate your area of interest within them (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). Naming three unrelated domains to widen the odds works against the Statement of Purpose, which has to argue relevance to the domain selected.

On tracking, be realistic about what exists. The department publishes no public application-status lookup, and the only public search on the portal checks issued certificates by number and name, which is a post-internship tool rather than a pending-application one. What you have is the login you registered with, and the helpline and email the portal prints for assistance with submitting an application, at itcellhq.dfawl@delhi.gov.in (Department of Forests and Wildlife, internship login). Keep the account details you registered with, because they are the only handle you have on the file.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Scrutiny and approval sit with the department's Research Advisory Committee, which decides purely on a merit basis. Preference goes to applicants whose Statement of Purpose can create new opportunities or ideas that cater to the requirement of the department, and the committee, not the applicant, settles the final topic and domain of the internship according to what the department needs (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). Picking the domain you can argue a contribution in matters more than picking the one you like the sound of.

Capacity is written as a supervision rule rather than as a seat count. Each Guide, drawn from officers of the rank of Assistant Conservator of Forests and above, can hold a maximum of ten interns at a time, and the Guide is assigned by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests or an officer he authorises (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal). The department publishes no number of places per domain or per year, so the only stated limit on how many people can be inside the department at once is that per-Guide ceiling.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

The internship is written as a work assignment with an output, not as an observation visit. You write a paper or a detailed account of the work done on a natural resource management theme and its relevance to the department, submit a draft report to your Guide before the internship concludes, and may be asked to present it to the department once the Guide clears it. You may also be asked to take part in the department's own training and research activity while you are there (Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD internship portal).

Three conditions are worth reading twice. Ownership of the finished work sits with the department, which reserves prior approval over any use an intern wants to make of it, so a paper written here is not automatically yours to submit or publish. You work within the department's premises and step outside during working hours only with your Guide's permission, and every piece of information you reach has to be cleared by the Guide first, whose sole responsibility that access is. The internship may be discontinued at any time if performance is not found satisfactory.

The department also states the limit of what the scheme is: students have no claim to a job in the Department of Forests and Wildlife, GNCTD, and the department reserves the right to review the scheme at any time, with the reviewed version placed on its website.

Get help

Contact

The department's headquarters is at A-Block, 2nd Floor, Vikas Bhawan, I.P. Estate, New Delhi 110002, reachable on +91-11-23370679 and at itcellhq.dfawl@delhi.gov.in, with office hours of 09:30 am to 6:00 pm from Monday to Friday and no working Saturday (Department of Forests and Wildlife, internship contact). The department's green helpline, printed on every page of the internship portal, is 1800-11-8600.

For anything about a submitted application, the email address above is the one the portal names for help with submission. Questions about the work itself, once you are selected, go to your assigned Guide rather than to the headquarters.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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