NHAI Rolls Out Internship Programme To Strengthen India's Highway Infrastructure Workforce

(MENAFN- KNN India) New Delhi, Jan 9 (KNN) The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has launched a structured Internship Programme along with a dedicated Internship Portal to provide hands-on industry exposure to students and strengthen the talent pipeline for India's highway infrastructure sector.

The initiative, aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, aims to integrate academic learning with real-world project experience across the national highway ecosystem.

The programme was formally launched by Vineet Joshi, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, and Santosh Kumar Yadav, Chairman, NHAI, in the presence of senior officials from NHAI, the Ministry of Education and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

To ensure transparency and wider access, NHAI has introduced a dedicated Internship Portal that will serve as a single-window platform for internship opportunities across more than 150 major National Highway projects nationwide.

Each project will engage up to four interns, creating an initial pool of nearly 600 internship positions for students from IITs, NITs and AICTE-affiliated institutions.

The portal offers flexible internship durations of one month, two months and six months, catering to diverse academic and industry requirements. Selected interns will receive a stipend of Rs 20,000 per month to support learning, mobility and professional development.

Designed in line with NEP 2020's emphasis on experiential learning, industry exposure and employability, the internship programme goes beyond observational roles.

Interns will actively engage in field-based and project-level work, gaining practical exposure to both technical and managerial aspects of national highway planning, engineering and execution.

While civil engineering students form the core focus group, the programme also extends opportunities to students from information technology, electronics and electrical engineering disciplines.

These students will be involved in advanced areas such as electronic toll collection systems and advanced traffic management systems.

NHAI said the initiative has already seen strong interest. The winter internship component attracted around 250 students, while the newly introduced six-month internship programme for final-year undergraduate engineering students scheduled to commence from 19 January 2026 has received about 500 applications.

The programme is expected to be extended to postgraduate students in the future.

The internship initiative reflects NHAI's broader focus on skill development and capacity building, aimed at creating a future-ready workforce capable of supporting India's expanding infrastructure and highway development ambitions.

(KNN Bureau)

MENAFN09012026000155011030ID1110578641