Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said the government aims to open more than 3 crore accounts under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). Wednesday marks the 10th anniversary of the scheme.

The Centre believes the scheme, launched on August 28, 2014, has covered the majority of the adult population. “Now, our focus is to cover the entire adult population and continue to cover those acquiring adulthood,” Sitharaman said, adding that there is no saturation point. As on August 14, there are over 53 crore active PMJDY accounts with a deposit balance of ₹2.3 lakh crore.

Although zero balance accounts are permitted under PMJDY and maintenance of minimum balance is not mandatory, only 8.4 per cent accounts have zero balance. The average balance per account has increased to ₹4,352 as on August 16, 2024 from ₹1,065 in March, 2015.

Free RuPay cards

RuPay debit cards, with in-built accident insurance cover of ₹2 lakh, are given to account holders free of cost based on certain criteria such as performance during the first six months from the time of opening. As on August 16, 36.14 crore RuPay cards have been issued. The accounts have overdraft facility of up to ₹10,000, subject to eligibility conditions. There are no account opening charges and no account maintenance charges. However, there is no cheque book facility with such an account.

Sitharaman said the Jan Dhan scheme helped in providing funds under PM Swanidhi scheme. Also, accounts holders benefited from Ayushman scheme (PM JAY). “One of the unexpected success stories was helping the PMJDY women account holders through direct fund transfer during Covid,” she said. Out of over 53 crore accounts, nearly 56 per cent or over 29.5 crore accounts belong to women.

According to a government statement, the scheme addresses geographical gaps in account ownership as out of the total accounts opened under the scheme about 66.6 per cent accounts are opened in rural and semi-urban areas. “Today, 99.95 per cent of all inhabited villages have access to banking facilities within a 5-km radius through banking touch points (including bank branches, ATMs, Banking Correspondents (BCs), and Indian Post Payment Banks),” the statement mentioned.

Quoting a World Bank report, it said that in terms of financial inclusion, India has achieved as much in just six years what would have taken about five decades. “The Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity has propelled the financial inclusion rate to 80 per cent of adults in the last six years from 25 per cent in 2008, a journey shortened by up to 47 years thanks to Digital Public Infrastructure,” it said, Further, in the last decade, India built one of the world’s largest digital government-to-person (G2P) architectures leveraging DPI. This approach has supported transfers amounting to about $361 billion directly to beneficiaries from 53 central government ministries through 312 key schemes, it added.