No orders given to banks to close inactive Jan Dhan accounts: Finance Ministry

New Delhi, July 8 (IANS) The Finance Ministry on Tuesday clarified that the government has not issued any order to banks to close inactive PM Jan Dhan Yojana accounts.

"In connection with reports appearing in media that Department of Financial Services(DFS), Ministry of Finance has asked Banks to close inactive PM Jan Dhan Yojana accounts, the Department of Financial Services has said that it has not asked Banks to close inactive PM Jan Dhan Yojana accounts," according to a Finance Ministry statement.

A three-month campaign starting from July 1 has been launched by DFS all over the country to deepen the adoption of Jan Dhan Yojana accounts, Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, Atal Pension Yojana, and other welfare schemes. Banks will also carry out re-KYC of all due accounts during this campaign, the statement said.

"DFS constantly monitors the number of inoperative PMJDY accounts and has advised banks to contact respective account holders to make their accounts operative. The total number of PMJDY accounts has seen a continuous increasing trend, and no incidents of mass closure of inactive PMJDY accounts have come to the knowledge of the department," the statement read.

A staggering 55.44 crore Jan Dhan accounts have been opened in India, 56 per cent of which belong to women, and the total amount in these deposits has surpassed Rs 2.5 lakh crore as of May 21 this year, RBI Deputy Governor M Rajeshwar Rao said recently.

In his remarks at a seminar on financial inclusion, Rao said: "The launch of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) that became the watershed moment in India’s. The Jan Dhan Yojana-Aadhaar-Mobile, i.e., JAM trinity, provided a quantum leap in our endeavour to ensure access to banking services for all adults, making it the world's largest financial inclusion programme."

He pointed out that the sheer volumes of the Jan Dhan accounts for the poor speak about the impact of the scheme. The provision of universal access to bank accounts has not only increased the potential reach of other financial services but has also enabled frictionless delivery of welfare programmes to the targeted segment through the adoption of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Rao added.

--IANS

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