When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation of high-value currency notes on the night of November 8 in a televised message to the nation, it was assumed that millions of Jan Dhan accounts, opened for the poor, would come in handy for the account holders to exchange their scrapped notes.
little did anyone realise that many of these accounts would be freely used by hoarders of black money to launder their “dirty bucks”.
According to officials, Jan Dhan accounts have seen a huge surge in deposits with Rs21,000 crore being parked in the last 13 days. Interestingly, before demonetisation, millions of these bank accounts had zero balance and many others had just one rupee in them. As of November 9, the balance in about 25.51 crore such accounts was Rs45,636.61 crore.
The total balance in Jan Dhan accounts has now touched Rs66,636 crore. Incidentally, such accounts have a deposit limit of Rs50,000.
Officials fear that millions of these bank accounts have been compromised by people who have lured the poor into laundering their black money for a small commission. With more than five weeks still remaining for deposit of scrapped notes, the misuse of Jan Dhan accounts has emerged as a major headache for the NDA Government.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley warned that the Government was looking into sudden ‘popping up’ of money into zero-balance Jan Dhan accounts.
“We are getting some complaints that suddenly monies have popped up in the Jan Dhan accounts, so there is a misuse and that is why the rationing in initial days,” he said.
He had cautioned that the departments concerned would act if anything improper was found in the deposits.
The Government may be issuing warnings against misuse of these accounts, but given their sheer numbers, it will be next to impossible to scrutinize all those accounts that might have been compromised.
Incidentally, the Mamata Banerjee-ruled West Bengal leads the pack of States which has seen the highest deposits so far, followed by Karnataka.
With a view to increasing banking penetration and promoting financial inclusion and with the main objective of covering all households with at least one bank account per household across the country, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna (PMJDY) was launched on August 28, 2014.