Deposits in Jan Dhan accounts cross Rs 30,000 crore

New Delhi: Deposits in accounts opened under the government’s flagship financial inclusion programme – Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) – have crossed the Rs 30,000 crore mark. As many as 20.38 crore bank accounts were opened under the PMJDY as on the January 20, as per the latest data available. [caption id=“attachment_2573026” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] These bank accounts had deposits of Rs 30,638.29 crore (about USD 4.5 billion). The accounts that can be opened under PMJDY are Basic Savings Bank Deposit Accounts (BSBDA) which can be of zero balance, as per RBI guidelines. As per the trends available, the percentage of accounts with ‘Zero Balance’ have actually shown a significant decline. Accounts with no balance in them were as high as 76.81 per cent of the total opened under the scheme as on September 30, 2015. They have come down to just about 32 per cent at the end of December. The Finance Ministry data further showed that 8.74 crore of the accounts were seeded with Aadhaar and 17.14 crore account holders were issued RuPay cards. The data further revealed that as on January 15, banks had offered 53.54 lakh account holders over-draft facility of which the sanction was issued for 27.56 lakh cases and 12.32 lakh account holders availed it. The total amount availed was Rs 166.7 crore. The OD is granted to an earning member of the family, with a condition that the account has been operated satisfactorily for at least 6 months. PMJDY, a national mission on financial inclusion, was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day - 2014 speech and was formally launched by him on August 28, with the main objective of covering all households with at least one bank account per household in the country. PTI