National Scheme of Apprenticeship Training(NSAT)

NATS publishes no annual application window. Advertisements appear on the portal as establishments raise requirements, so the calendar that binds you is your own passing year, not a national deadline. Three dated instruments do govern the current shape of the scheme.

The one recurring date that affects your money is monthly: the stipend for a given month falls due on or before the tenth day of the month after it (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

You qualify by holding one of the minimum educational qualifications listed in Schedule IA of the Rules, and the Rules sort applicants into graduate, degree, technician and technician (vocational) apprentices. Graduate and degree apprentices must hold a degree in an appropriate branch of study, engineering or technology, or an equivalent qualification recognised by the Government of India, the All India Council for Technical Education or the University Grants Commission (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

The phrase the Rules attach to both the diploma and the degree categories is "in any stream", which settles a question students keep asking. NATS is not an engineering-only scheme. A general-stream bachelor's degree and a diploma in any discipline each map to a category that carries a prescribed stipend.

The rule that catches people is the passing-year window. A candidate could originally join only within three years of passing the qualifying examination, a criterion the Central Apprenticeship Council set at its 26th meeting on 29/11/1995. The Ministry of Education relaxed it to five years, counted from the date of passing the qualifying examination to the date of joining the training, in a letter dated 12th June, 2023 addressed to the directors of all the boards (relaxation in eligibility criteria, Ministry of Education). The enrolment form enforces it in front of you: its Year of Passing list currently offers 2021 through 2026 and nothing earlier (NATS student registration).

Neither the Rules nor the portal's registration page sets an upper age limit. The only age line in the contract format separates a minor apprentice, defined as one who has not completed 18 years of age, from a major apprentice, and that distinction governs where the establishment may deploy you rather than whether you may apply (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

The scheme record carries no exclusion list, so the disqualifications have to be read out of the Rules themselves, and they are specific.

• A minimum gap of one year is required between two apprenticeship trainings, and a person may undergo a maximum of two trainings in total, the second of which must not be in the same trade.
• The cost of stipend borne by the Central Government is restricted to first-time training only. A second apprenticeship is funded entirely by the employer.
• Where a contract is terminated because the apprentice failed to carry out its terms, that apprentice is not entitled to enter into another apprenticeship contract under the Act with any other employer.
• Where the apprentice ended a previous contract for health, financial hardship, relocation, transport, career change or language reasons, a waiting period of three months applies before a new contract, with no waiting period for women.
• A degree apprentice is not eligible to be engaged after passing the final examination of the institution where the course is being pursued, unless the Apprenticeship Adviser or Regional Central Apprenticeship Adviser approves it.

All five come from the Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025.

There is nothing to renew. A NATS apprenticeship runs on a single registered contract for its stated duration and then ends with the Certificate of Proficiency, so no annual re-application or continuation form exists. Where a training does extend past the first year, the Rules raise the prescribed minimum stipend by ten per cent in the second year and by a further 15 per cent in the third (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

The stipend is a floor set by rule, not a figure the establishment picks.

Those are minimums, and establishments are free to pay above them. The boards put the revised rates into effect under NATS with effect from 01.04.2026, replacing rates that had stood since 01.04.2021, when a technician (vocational) apprentice drew Rs 7,000 and a graduate apprentice Rs 9,000 (revision of stipend rates, BOPT Eastern Region). The lower monthly figures that older NATS write-ups still carry, the scheme record on this page included, sit behind both of those steps: the boards' own letter names the 01.04.2021 rates as the ones being superseded, so anything smaller belongs to an arrangement older than either.

The government's share of that floor is 50%, and it carries a ceiling the rate table does not show. The skills ministry told Parliament in February 2026 that stipend support under NATS is limited to 50% of the prescribed minimum stipend, up to Rs 4,500 per month per apprentice (Press Information Bureau, MSDE, 11 February 2026); the boards' letter implementing the revised rates repeats the 50% and names no ceiling beside it (revision of stipend rates, BOPT Eastern Region). Until a board publishes a revised ceiling, Rs 4,500 a month is the most the government leg has been stated to reach, so ask your establishment what it has budgeted before the first payment month closes.

Where that leg lands has moved as well. The portal's About page still describes the 50% as reimbursable to the employer (About NATS), while the portal's own guide makes DBT beneficiary registration a mandatory step for every apprentice to receive the government share of stipend (guide to DBT beneficiary registration), and the contract format in the Rules routes that share into the apprentice's bank account once the establishment fulfils the conditions in the applicable scheme guidelines, leaving the establishment liable for the monthly stipend in full where it does not (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025). Two further protections sit in the same instrument: the stipend for a month is payable on or before the tenth day of the following month, and no deduction may be made for days the apprentice spends on casual or medical leave (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

The document list published for enrolment is short, and it has grown one item that older write-ups still miss. Alongside a valid personal email ID, a mobile number and the qualifying degree or provisional certificate as a PDF under 1 MB, the registration page now requires an Aadhaar number for e-KYC verification and an APAAR ID, which is created on the Academic Bank of Credits portal (NATS student registration).

The bank detail deserves separate attention, because "a bank account" and "an account that will actually receive DBT" are different things. Beneficiary registration is verified in two stages, the Aadhaar number against UIDAI and the bank details through the NPCI Mapper, and it fails outright if the account you entered is not Aadhaar seeded and mapped (guide to DBT beneficiary registration). Getting the seeding done at your bank before you enrol saves a month of chasing a payment that was never going to land.

Registration is a two-step gate, mobile and email verification by OTP, and then a profile you fill in stages: basic details, education details, communication details, training preferences including the field and location you want, and bank details (NATS 2.0 student manual). The training preference is not decoration. Establishments post apprenticeship advertisements to the portal carrying the title, description, duration, location, skills and qualification required, and your profile is what surfaces you against them.

After you apply, an establishment initiates a contract. You have to accept that contract request before it can travel any further, and only then does it go to the board for final confirmation. Once the contract is created your profile locks, you cannot apply for further apprenticeships, and any correction to your details has to be requested from the board (NATS 2.0 student manual).

Where to Check Status After You Apply

Application status lives in the Application Management section of your student dashboard, which is where an application sits between "applied" and a contract request from an establishment (NATS 2.0 student manual).

A missing stipend is a different trail. Payment runs on DBT beneficiary registration, and that registration fails at one of two identifiable points: the Aadhaar number not matching UIDAI records, or the bank details not clearing the NPCI Mapper. The fix for the second is to have the bank seed and map the account, then log in to the NATS 2.0 portal, open Update Aadhaar and Bank Details, correct what is wrong and re-register as a beneficiary (guide to DBT beneficiary registration). Since 1st June 2026 the boards have also required e-KYC verification before an establishment can request DBT, before the board can approve and process it, and before a contract can be created or approved (Aadhaar-based DBT and e-KYC notice, BOPT Eastern Region).

NATS sets no qualifying examination of its own and publishes no ranked candidate list. Selection belongs to the establishment: it advertises, you apply against the advertisement, it initiates a contract with the candidate it wants, and the board's role is registration and final confirmation rather than ranking (NATS 2.0 student manual).

What happens after training is decided by the section of the Act under which the establishment engaged you, and the portal's own student manual states it plainly: a student selected through SEC 22(A) is taken as an employee into the same establishment after the apprenticeship programme finishes, while under SEC 22(B) the student applies to jobs available once it ends (NATS 2.0 student manual). Ask which one your contract falls under before you sign it, because nothing in the Rules obliges an employer to offer employment afterwards. How often training does end in work is measured rather than promised: the same February 2026 reply cites a third-party evaluation of NATS by the National Institute of Labour Economics Research and Development putting apprentices in full-time employment on completion at 74% (Press Information Bureau, MSDE, 11 February 2026).

The contract binds all three sides, and the obligations that matter to an apprentice are the ones about safety, hours and deployment. Chapters III, IV and V of the Factories Act, 1948 apply to an apprentice's health, safety and welfare as though the apprentice were a worker under that Act, and Chapter V of the Mines Act applies where the training is in a mine. Personal injury arising out of and in the course of training is compensable by the employer under the Employee's Compensation Act, 1923 (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

Working hours follow the department you are attached to, and leave and holidays follow the establishment's own calendar. Where basic or practical training is delivered online, virtually or in blended mode, the employer may engage apprentices only between 8.00 am and 6.00 pm, and any relaxation needs the Apprenticeship Adviser's approval case by case (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

Deployment away from your training workplace carries a price the establishment pays. Only a major apprentice may be sent to a client location, and for a client location inside India the establishment owes additional compensation of at least the prescribed minimum stipend for the period of deployment, plus to-and-fro travel, accommodation, food, hospitalisation cost and insurance. For a client location abroad the additional compensation is at least twice the prescribed minimum, with visa, travel, medical tests, hospitalisation, insurance, stay and food borne by the establishment, and no part of the stipend for that period is borne by the Central Government (Apprenticeship (Amendment) Rules, 2025).

Route a query to the board whose region your establishment sits in, not to whichever address you find first.

Portal problems, as distinct from apprenticeship problems, go to natssupport@aicte-india.org. Two toll-free lines are published for students, 18004252239 for the portal in the southern region and 1800-222-060 for western region students and aspirants (NATS contact directory).