Student Internship Programme(SIP-CAG)

This scheme has no annual calendar and no closing date to miss, which is why the scheme record below shows an open date and no last date. Internship is available throughout the year based on CAG's requirements, and the only recurring date is the monthly window: the form opens on the 1st and closes on the 20th, with placement decided within 10 working days of that cutoff.

How often the rules change is the date pattern worth planning around. The note at the foot of the headquarters scheme lists what it replaces: circular No. 217/Internship/319-2018 dated 25.09.2018, then circulars dated 06.05.2024, 20.06.2025, 16.09.2025, 05.05.2026 and 05.06.2026. Five of those six carry dates from 2024 onwards, so a summary of this scheme older than a few months is a liability, and CAG's own page is where the current document actually lives.

The start months on offer move forward as the year does. The form currently lists starts from October 2026 to March 2027, so an application filed in a given window is aiming at a term some months out rather than an immediate joining. The single-deadline pattern belongs to the superseded documents, where CAG advertised specific projects at named institutes and gave one last date, such as 10 March 2024 in the 2024 advertisement.

The current scheme filters on marks and stage of study rather than on age. An undergraduate qualifies once they have completed or appeared in the term end exams of the second year or fourth semester of a bachelor's degree, and only if they scored not less than 80% or equivalent in class 12. A postgraduate qualifies after the first year or second semester of the PG programme, or while pursuing research or a PhD, on not less than 60% or equivalent in graduation. Students who have just finished a degree are not shut out: those who have appeared in the final exam or completed graduation or PG and are waiting for admission to higher studies may be considered, provided they hold 60% or more cumulative across all years and the gap between the month their result is declared and the month they want to start does not exceed six months, per the headquarters scheme.

Enrolment abroad is not a bar. The scheme opens to bonafide students of any recognised university or institution "within India or abroad", which is wider than the old Student Internship Programme's phrasing about recognised, reputed institutions with a stellar academic record. The 25-year ceiling that the scheme record below carries came from the 2024 documents; the July 2026 circulars set no age limit at all.

The exclusion the scheme record below leads with is that the internship is not employment: it constitutes no regular job or appointment of any nature in the office of CAG of India or the Indian Audit and Accounts Department, nor a relationship of employer and employee. That sentence belongs to the guidelines annexed to the February 2024 advertisement; the August 2023 circular put it more briefly, calling the programme neither a job nor any such assurance of a job. The July 2026 circulars carry no clause of the kind at all, so those older documents remain the only place CAG has written it down.

Two practical exclusions decide more applications than that one. First, an applicant who does not meet the eligibility conditions is rejected outright, and a selected applicant who cannot produce original mark sheets and the college NOC at joining has their candidature cancelled; a discrepancy found at that verification cancels it too. Second, the NOC has to certify that you are not registered for any course requiring class attendance during the internship period, which quietly excludes anyone mid-semester in a regular programme, per the headquarters scheme.

Renewal is the wrong frame for a term that ends in a certificate; re-application is the right one, and the scheme rations it. A candidate may apply only twice during a financial year, so a rejection in one monthly window spends half of that year's attempts, and the next attempt is a fresh form rather than a revived file. The term itself is stretched rather than renewed, anywhere inside the four-week to six-month band, and attendance is what forecloses a stretch: below 75% attendance no extension of the internship period is allowed, per the headquarters scheme.

Under the current circulars the benefit is not money. What an intern receives is a working place inside CAG with internet, an orientation session with the Deputy or Additional Deputy CAG of the wing, an assigned mentor, weekly review meetings with the Director General or Principal Director of the wing, and a completion certificate issued in the format at Annexure B of the scheme. Interns are told to bring their own laptops. Heads of wings are also encouraged to take interns into seminars and presentations, which is where the exposure that the programme advertises actually happens.

Two conditions stand between an intern and that certificate. Anyone who does not complete the requisite period is not issued one, and neither is anyone who finishes below the 75% attendance floor. Attendance is not self-reported: in and out times are marked daily and the record, with the details of work supervision, is maintained by the functional wing, per the headquarters scheme.

On the stipend, the figures in circulation are worth separating. CAG set the token remuneration at Rs 12,000 a month, all inclusive, in its 2023 circular, repeated it in the 2024 advertisement and again in the 25 October 2024 circular. Lower figures appear in secondary listings; CAG's own text is the binding one, and the current text pays nothing.

The online form asks for four uploads, two of them mandatory: an educational certificate and a resume, then the NOC and a self-declaration, per the internship application form. The NOC follows the Annexure format in the scheme and is signed by the head of department or principal, certifying that you are a bonafide student and that your institution has no objection.

The self-declaration is the useful escape hatch for anyone whose institution will not issue an NOC. CAG publishes a self-declaration template to be filed in lieu of the NOC, in which the applicant declares that the course does not require classroom attendance during the internship period and expressly covers professional courses such as CA, CMA and CS and programmes pursued through open and distance learning, where attendance is not mandatory under the professional body's own regulations. It also warns that false information or a suppressed material fact cancels the internship.

Original mark sheets and the original NOC are collected separately, at joining, by the Establishment Section at headquarters or the administration section of the field office. At the other end of the term you owe two more things: a brief report or paper to the head of the wing on the assignment and the learning experience, and feedback on the programme, which the scheme makes mandatory rather than optional.

The whole application is a single form on CAG's training site. It sits at training.cag.gov.in, takes submissions from the 1st to the 20th of every month, and opens by asking which scheme you want, the CAG Internship Scheme for Headquarters or the CAG Internship Scheme for Field Offices. You then pick your domains from the twenty-one listed areas, a state preference and three ordered preferences, your highest education, whether you are appearing or have completed, whether your mode is regular, correspondence or distance, and whether you are in your final semester.

The period and start are chosen, not assigned. The form takes a desired duration in weekly steps from 4 weeks to 26 weeks and a start month from a rolling list, which as of early September 2026 runs from October 2026 through March 2027. The circulars that older listings still describe, applying in a prescribed format by email to the training wing, are the ones the July 2026 SOP superseded; there is no postal or courier route and there never was.

To track an application after submission, CAG runs a separate lookup at ViewInternApplication.aspx on the same site, which asks for the application number issued at submission together with the mobile number used on the form. Keep both. Applications received up to the 20th of a month are processed within 10 working days under the headquarters scheme, so that lookup is where the answer surfaces; CAG publishes no merit list for this internship.

There is no test and, under the current scheme, no interview stage on paper. Applications received up to the 20th of the month are scrutinised and mapped to a functional wing according to the candidate's profile and stated area of interest, and the head of that wing decides suitability, a decision the scheme calls final and binding, per the headquarters scheme. That is a real change from the Student Internship Programme, whose 2024 guidelines ran a two stage procedure of application screening followed by a selection interview.

Seats are capped at the wing, which explains why a strong application can still go nowhere in a given month. A head of a functional wing at headquarters may engage a maximum of three interns at a time, relaxable only with the permission of the Deputy CAG (HR); at a field office the cap is five, relaxable by the Deputy or Additional Deputy CAG of the wing concerned, per the field offices scheme. CAG also reserves the right, where a domain draws heavy interest, to fix the eligibility criteria for that period, limit how many applicants are called and decide the mode of screening. Your domain choice therefore changes your odds as much as your marks do.

Confidentiality has survived every rewrite of this programme, though the form it takes has changed. Under the Student Internship Programme the intern signed a Secrecy and Non-Disclosure Agreement and was made subject to the laws of secrecy of the country; the current scheme requires the return of every paper, note, manual, document, disk and tape containing confidential or proprietary information at the end of the engagement, along with keys, pass cards and ID cards.

Four other conditions shape what the internship is like day to day, all from the headquarters scheme. Attendance is a hard 75% with daily in and out marking. The provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 apply. The Deputy CAG (HR) may relax any condition in the scheme, so a refusal is not always the end of the matter. And placement at headquarters is not only Delhi: the offices named are New Delhi, Mumbai, Bhopal, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati and Rajkot, with the Local Governments domain available at Rajkot alone.

The older Student Internship Programme carried harsher financial terms that a reader of the record below should read as history rather than as current practice: no TA or DA for attending interviews, no accommodation, transport, medical reimbursement or CGHS, no leave of any kind, no extra remuneration for work beyond office hours or on holidays, tax deducted at source before payment, no compensation in the event of death, injury or illness during the term, and termination at any time without notice or reason.

The programme is run by the Knowledge and Capacity Building Wing at the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Pocket-9, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, New Delhi 110124, the address printed on the application form. The 2024 advertisement for the Student Internship Programme gave the wing's telephone as +91 11 23509247/244, in notification No.155/K&CB/F.319-2023.

Do not route an application to a mailbox. The email addresses that appear in the older circulars belonged to procedures the July 2026 SOP replaced, and the current scheme accepts applications only through the online form. CAG's Student Internship Programme page is where new circulars are posted, and individual field offices republish the same two documents on their own sites, as the Principal Accountant General (Audit) Jharkhand, Ranchi does alongside the superseded Student Intern Program file.