U.P. accounts for bulk of new Jan Dhan deposits

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project – PMJDY or Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna – has been in news post-demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1000 currency notes in the country.

Almost 14 days after demonetisation, PMJDY accounts have seen additional deposits of ₹27,198.1 crore.

This means the deposit amount witnessed a growth of around 60 per cent in the fortnight after November 9.

Of the total ₹72,834.72 crore deposit amount in PMJDY accounts, Uttar Pradesh has a major share of ₹11,781.05 crore, followed by West Bengal at ₹8,840.50 crore, Rajasthan at ₹6,104.23 crore, and Bihar at ₹6,088.84 crore.

The deposit amount has doubled in at least two States. Karnataka and Gujarat have seen an increase of 112.49 per cent and 111.07 per cent in deposit amounts from November 9-23 respectively.

It is not that all the States witnessed a growth in deposit amount post-demonetisation. In fact, Mizoram saw a dip of ₹1.35 crore in deposit amount.

Around 16.47 lakh new accounts were added post the demonetisation move.

Of this, a bulk of share came from States such as Uttar Pradesh (22.51 per cent), Maharashtra (17.47 per cent), West Bengal (9.50 per cent), Bihar (8.1 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (7.66 per cent). These States added more than 1 lakh accounts in a fortnight.

In fact, Jammu and Kashmir as well as Union Territories such as Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Daman and Diu, saw a dip in the number of accounts post-demonetisation. Though the number of accounts has decreased by 47,734 in Jammu and Kashmir, the deposits went up by ₹383.36 crore.

Though the country had 23.24 per cent zero balance accounts of the total accounts till November 9, it went down further to 22.94 per cent by November 23. The percentage of zero-balance accounts was maximum in Chhattisgarh with, 33.19 per cent and minimum in Chandigarh with 12.46 per cent.

The zero-balance accounts remained below the 20-per-cent range in Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura and West Bengal. It remained above 30 per cent in Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram and Nagaland.

However, in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, the percentage of zero-balance accounts came down from 36.67 per cent as on November 9, to 32.95 per cent as on November 23.