Taking a significant step towards nurturing future professionals, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), in collaboration with the Department of Higher Education, has launched the ‘NHAI Internship Programme’. The initiative aims to provide aspiring professionals with hands-on, real-world exposure within India’s largest national highway development 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 All India Council for Technical Education.

To ensure wider accessibility and transparency, NHAI has also launched a dedicated Internship Portal, which will serve as an integrated platform offering internship opportunities across more than 150 major national highway projects across the country. Each project will host up to four interns, creating an initial pool of nearly 600 students from institutions including Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology and AICTE-affiliated colleges.

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

The initiative is aligned with the National Education Policy 2020, which promotes experiential learning, industry exposure and enhanced employability through flexible curricula and credit-linked internships. Moving beyond observational learning, interns will actively participate in projects and gain field-level exposure to both technical and managerial aspects of national highway planning, engineering and execution.

While the programme primarily targets civil engineering students, it also offers opportunities for students from IT, electronics and electrical engineering disciplines, especially in emerging areas such as Advanced Traffic Management Systems and Electronic Toll Collection.

The Winter Internship under the programme witnessed strong participation, with around 250 students taking part. Additionally, a six-month internship for undergraduate engineering students will commence from January 19, 2026, for which nearly 500 applications have already been received. The programme is expected to be extended to postgraduate students in the future.

The initiative underscores NHAI’s continued focus on skill development and talent creation, aimed at preparing the next generation of professionals to contribute meaningfully to India’s infrastructure growth.