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A month before the January 26 deadline, the government has met its target of opening 10 crore bank accounts under its flagship scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.
By Surabhi
Official data reveals that 10 crore accounts have been opened under the scheme by December 24 with a collective deposit amounting to Rs 7,690.89 crore.
A total of 7.74 crore RuPay debit cards have also been issued by banks to beneficiaries.
States including Goa, Kerala, Tripura and Madhya Pradesh as well as union territories of Chandigarh, Puducherry and Lakshadweep have opened at least one bank account in every targeted household.
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However, nearly two-thirds of all bank accounts continue to have zero balance with the data revealing that 7.35 crore bank accounts are currently dormant.
While concerns have been raised about the large number of dormant accounts, the finance ministry has maintained that these will register transactions once the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme is launched from the New Year.
“We are still working on covering all targeted households with at least one bank account by the deadline. We expect that with the start of DBT, there will be a sudden inflow of cash in most accounts,” said a government official.
The scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 28 to financially empower the poor by providing them access to formal banking.
The scheme initially had a target of opening 7.5 crore bank accounts by January 26, 2015, which was later raised to 10 crore bank accounts.
The data also reveals that just a third of all accounts were seeded with Aadhaar numbers. That number stood at 3.12 crore bank accounts as on December 17.
The government has not made Aadhaar mandatory for DBT and it is optional to link it in the bank account. However, banks have been instructed by the finance ministry to try to seed Aadhaar numbers in bank accounts to help with DBT.
Meanwhile, trying to expand the scope of the scheme, the finance ministry has also asked banks to open accounts for dairy farmers.
“Dairy farmers constitute a big basket of potential account holders, many of whom could be outside the banking fold. There are 15.4 million dairy farmers registered with various cooperatives in the country. They receive cash payment from milk cooperatives once in seven to 10 days,” said a recent missive by the finance ministry, directing banks to bring them within the banking framework so that they can receive their payments in their accounts. Earlier, the chairman of the National Dairy Development Board too had written to public sector banks on the issue.
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