Newsd: National: Thursday, September 06, 2018.
A Right to Information (RTI) query
reveals of an account opened in a government-owned United Bank of India under
Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana having an enormous amount of as much as Rs 93.82
crore deposited. Moreover, other nationalised banks also have accounts that
received deposits of such a large amount that it raises suspicion of who the
depositors could be?
These deposits have opened windows to a
lot of questions including,
- Who are the depositors
- Did the banks check before accepting such deposits
- What checks did the bank do
- What is the nature of the money deposited in Jan Dhan accounts
The bank accounts under Pradhan Mantri
Jan Dhan Yojana are the Basic Savings Bank Deposit Accounts that is meant for
monetary transactions of the unbanked and is even below the category of
regular/basic saving accounts.
According to a report in Moneylife, they
had filed an RTI application with the Department of Financial Services in
Finance Ministry asking about the highest amount deposited so far in all the
banks by any account holder. The Central Public Information Officer (CPIO)
asked all the banks to reply to the questions directly.
The replies were shocking. The highest
amount deposited was of Rs 93.82 crore.
Here is the list of the maximum deposited
amount in Jan Dhan Accounts of different banks –
Whereas, few banks clearly refused to
provide any information regarding the deposits in their accounts. Few other
nationalised banks are yet to reply to the questions asked in The RTI. Banks
such as UCO Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Allahabad Bank, Bank of Baroda, Vijaya
Bank, Canara Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce have not given any information and
made some or the other excuses to deny. Most banks have used excuses like
‘information not available’ while others cited various sections from the RTI
Act, like fiduciary relations (Section 8(1) (e)), information denied (Section
8(1)(d)), information not maintained in required format (Section 7 (9)).
The bank accounts opened under Pradhan
Mantri Jandhan Dhan Yojana are always opened with zero balance with no
facilities available like any regular accounts. Deposits of huge amounts are
not a big deal but Jan Dhan Yojana clearly mentions that it does not allow such
large deposits.
“Such accounts have limitations regarding
the aggregate credits (not more than Rupees one lakh in a year), aggregate
withdrawals (nor more than Rupees ten thousand in a month) and balance in the
accounts (not more than Rupees fifty thousand at any point of time),” says
government’s Jan Dhan Scheme.