New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday decided to make the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) an open-ended scheme and added more incentives to encourage people to open bank accounts.
The decision comes at a time when the Lok Sabha elections are just a few months away. The Union Cabinet also approved the establishment of permanent campuses of seven new IIMs at Visakhapatnam, Nagpur, Amritsar, Sambhalpur, Bodh Gaya, Jammu and Sirmaur, at a total cost of Rs 3,775 crore.
Briefing reporters about the decision, finance minister Arun Jaitley said as the scheme has been a "runaway success", the government has decided to make it an open-ended scheme, meaning that it will continue indefinitely.
The PMJDY was launched in August 2014 for a period of four years as a national mission for financial inclusion to ensure access of financial services like bank accounts, insurance and pensions to the masses. To make the scheme more attractive, the government has decided to double the overdraft facility from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000, the minister said.
He further said that 32.41 crore accounts have been opened under the scheme and as much Rs 81,200 crore has been deposited in them so far.
Mr Jaitley added that 53 per cent of the PMJDY account holders are women, while 83 per cent of the accounts are seeded with Aadhaar.
The Union Cabinet's decision of setting up permanent campuses for the aforementioned new IIMs was taken due to the fact that while these seven institutes were set up during 2015-16 and 2016-17, they have been functioning from transit campuses, official sources said.
