IndiaAI Mission Misses Fellowship Targets and Faces Budget Cuts, Reveals Parliamentary Panel

The IndiaAI Mission has severely missed its initial fellowship targets and faced a 50% budget reduction for the upcoming year. The ₹10,371.92 crore initiative, approved in March 2024, utilised barely 32% of its allocated funds for 2025-26 as of December 31, 2025.

The disclosures were contained in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's action taken replies, according to a report by the Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, as per ThePrint.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey leads the panel, which presented its 31st report to the Parliament on August 6. The disclosures highlight a wide gap between the ambitious policy framework and its actual ground-level execution.

Fellowship Targets Missed

Under the mission's FutureSkills pillar, targets remained largely unmet. In 2024, the government selected 150 undergraduate scholars against a goal of 5,000. It also picked 140 postgraduate scholars and three PhD candidates, missing targets of 2,000 and 100 respectively.

Selections stayed low in 2025 despite revised benchmarks as officials chose 159 undergraduates against an 8,000 target and 101 postgraduates against a 5,000 goal. Only the PhD category exceeded expectations, with 199 selections against a target of 167, ThePrint report said.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology stated the shortfall occurred due to "limited awareness among students regarding the IndiaAI Fellowship programme". It added that the mission had "completed only about two years since its approval". The ministry has since organised webinars, contacted college deans and promoted the scheme during pre-summit events for the AI Impact Summit 2026.

Funding and Infrastructure

Spending remained sluggish as the ministry spent only 32% of its revised estimate funds for 2025-26 by December 31, 2025. This left the vast majority of capital untouched with three-quarters of the financial year already gone.

For 2026-27, the Finance Ministry sanctioned only half the amount MeitY proposed, the report added.

The IT ministry stated it adopted "a calibrated implementation approach". This strategy was designed to ensure "optimal and strategic utilisation of funds".

The technical requirements, however, remain highly ambitious. The mission aims to establish a compute capacity exceeding 10,000 graphics processing units and an AI Marketplace. It also plans for 3,000 units of sovereign AI compute via cloud service providers, foundational models featuring over 100 billion parameters trained on Indian-language datasets and AI curation units across 50 line ministries and departments.

The parliamentary panel, examining demands for grants for 2026-27, warned about severe infrastructural challenges while noting the mission was "aggressively working to establish a GPU cluster".

It highlighted steep hardware costs, global supply chain bottlenecks and "huge power and water consumption by data centres", asking the ministry to consult academicians, environmentalists and budget experts.

The committee also stated that national research and development spending stands at just 0.64% of the gross domestic product (GDP), below the global average per the Economic Survey.

Other MeitY Agencies

Budget constraints extended further as the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs Aadhaar, projected a 2026-27 expenditure of ₹2,900 crore. It requested ₹1,200 crore but received an allocation of only ₹572.41 crore, as per the report.

The agency stated the granted funds "will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of UIDAI". It will rely on internal revenue to prioritise high-impact projects, including strengthening enrolment, updation and authentication infrastructure.

UIDAI listed online verification of legal documents and API integration with the Registrar General of India among its main challenges, adding that financial decisions would be "guided by cost-benefit considerations", utilisation certificates submitted quarterly and CAG audit reports laid before Parliament.

The Data Protection Board of India, meant to enforce the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, recorded zero expenditure in both 2024-25 and 2025-26, with its revised estimate staying at ₹2 crore. This occurred despite the government notifying the DPDP Rules on November 13, 2025.

The IT ministry offered seven reasons for the non-spending, from a phased implementation approach to pending cabinet approval for the registrar's post, stating the delay resulted from "the sequencing of statutory, regulatory, and administrative prerequisites rather than inaction".

Meanwhile, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team faces acute staffing delays amid rising cyberattacks. The cybersecurity agency is still framing and legally vetting recruitment rules for 269 approved positions. Seven vacancies of Scientist 'B' have been filled from an earlier drive, action on 133 more is at an advanced stage and five Scientist 'F' posts await competent-authority approval.