Bank-accounts opened under PMJDY should be altogether different and exclusive from existing types of bank-accounts. Rather these should also be directed to be opened in post-offices also.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal for BeyondHeadlines
It refers to RTI-response from Department of Financial Services (Banking) which clears that bank-accounts opened under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna (PMJDY) will be subsequently Aadhar-linked to avoid misuse of overdraft-facility by opening of more than one account by an individual under the scheme.
It will be responsibility of banks for due diligence apart from seeking declaration from the beneficiary for those not submitting Aadhar-cards. However it is not clear if all banks will be web-linked with each other to ensure that an individual may not open bank-accounts in different banks with same Aadhar-card for misusing benefits through multiple bank-accounts opened under PMJDY scheme.
Such precautionary steps should have been taken before launch of the scheme, as it will result in huge wastage of public-resources in unnecessary handling of crores of account-opening forms out of which a large number are now liable to be rejected.
Even now, steps should be taken to inter-link all bank-accounts opened under PMJDY to effectively check opening of more than one bank-account under same Aadhar-card.
Any public-beneficiary scheme must not be allowed to be misused by miscreants to avoid hard-earned tax-payers’ money going in hands of undeserving loan-takers as bad debts.
With such checks and balances, scheme should rather be made broad-based so that every citizen may be compulsorily required to open a bank-account under the scheme where only any subsidy, insurance-claim or fund-transfer by government-agencies in any manner to individuals may be possible to prevent irregularities and frauds presently prevailing in the system with misused subsidy and insurance-claims not reaching being grabbed by touts through pre-signed withdrawal-forms.
Bank-accounts opened under PMJDY should be altogether different and exclusive from existing types of bank-accounts. Rather these should also be directed to be opened in post-offices also.
Funds required for the scheme can be procured from huge funds lying under ‘Depositor Educative & Awareness Fund’ (DEAF) created by transfer of funds from bank-accounts lying inoperative for ten years. Rather this time-limit should be reduced to three years like exists for transfer of unclaimed company-dividends to some government-fund.
