Zero balance in 39.8L Jan Dhan accounts in Ch’garh

Amid reports of huge deposits in the Jan Dhan accounts in many places, Chhattisgarh Government on Thursday said about 40 per cent of such accounts in the state has zero balance and asked all the district collectors to speed up the seeding works for all the bank accounts of beneficiaries in the wake of demonitisation policy of the Centre.

“Chhattisgarh has one crore 17 lakh 35 thousand 531 bank accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana out of which 39 lakh 80 thousand 619 accounts have zero balance as 19th of last month,” official sources told Millennium Post adding Chief Secretary Vivek Kumar Dhand on Thursday took stock of the situation in the wake of the demonitisation policy and directed all the districts to fully activate the banking correspondents of their respective districts.

Out of the active 77, 54,952 bank accounts in Chhattisgarh, Aadhar seedings have been completed for 59,56,977 account holders. Looking into the figure the Chief Secretary has asked all the five divisional Commissioners, 27 district Collectors and head of the banks in the state to fully activate banking correspondents in their areas and if needed fresh recruitments may be carried out.

“The Chief Secretary, in his letter, has also asked all the officials involved in the Jan Dhan work to complete seedings of Aadhar and mobile and distribution of rupay cards,” the official sources said adding the letter has asked the officials to complete the financial inclusion works in the wake of demonitisation policy of the government of India.

The Chhattisgarh government has asked all the relevant officials to submit their first progress report by November 28 and after that on every Monday through e-mail to the Directorate of Institutional Finance of the state government.

The banks have also been advised to be in touch with the District Collectors for recruitment of banking correspondents and if needed the Panchayat building and other public premises could be provided to them to complete the seeding works of Aadhar and mobile and distribution of Rupay cards to the Jan Dhan account holders.