Conscious of the apparent rural backlash ahead of the three state Assembly polls and the General Election, the government on Wednesday relaunched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) with enhanced incentives. It made the “world’s largest” financial inclusion scheme, launched in August 2014, an open-ended scheme.
Briefing the media after the Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, keeping in mind the success of the scheme under which “so far 32.41 crore accounts have been opened”, the government has decided to extend the programme with the “open-ended time frame”.
“At present, as the scheme was for four years (ended on August 28), only households were targeted to open accounts. But now, the individuals will be targeted with enhanced incentives,” the minister said, adding that the age limit for availing of overdraft, which has been increased from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000, has been revised from 18-60 years to 18-65 years.
Noting that 53 per cent account holders are women and 59 per cent belong to rural areas, Jaitley said, “We now want to implement the scheme with much vigour.” He also said, “More than 7.5 crore such accounts are receiving Direct Benefit Transfer and nearly 13.6 crore Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) transactions have taken place through banking correspondents in July this year only.”
For about past one-and-a-half years, the government has been facing many farmers’ protest with election-bound Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have been witnessing major peasants’ turmoil. “With this (repackaged scheme), we will now have re-enforced vigour to connect with the masses. Party workers will assist the underprivileged to avail of benefits of the financial inclusion scheme,” a senior BJP leader said.
