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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Data Removed and Data Modified: Archive Reports on Jan Dhan Yojana Website Undergo Changes - Aarthi Prakash

Data Removed and Data Modified: Archive Reports on Jan Dhan Yojana Website Undergo Changes - Aarthi Prakash

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published Published on Oct 25, 2017   modified Modified on Oct 25, 2017
-Newsclick.in

Crucial elements of the data on Jan Dhan Yojana have been removed from the government website. This gives rise to many questions.

On 15 August 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) scheme with the claimed objective of nation-wide financial inclusion. In his speech, he stated that the initiative was aimed at eradicating ‘financial untouchability’ by opening at least one bank account per household in less than six months.  Among other special benefits, there would be no minimum balance requirement for the accounts created under this scheme. The government claimed that 1.5 crore zero-balance accounts were opened on the inaugural day.

While the government took pride in publishing these details in 2014, it seems they feel differently three years later. Earlier last month, the data pertaining to zero-balance accounts was removed from the archive reports on the website of PMJDY. Apart from this, data pertaining to the number of Aadhaar-seeded accounts was removed, while data on the number of accounts opened under the scheme and on the balance amounts in those accounts were modified.

Prior to these changes, the archive reports on the PMJDY website provided details of the number of accounts (urban and rural) opened, the number of RuPay debit cards issued, the balance amounts in Jan Dhan accounts, the number of Jan Dhan accounts with zero balance and Aadhaar-seeded accounts.

From April 2017, the archive reports stopped publishing the number of accounts with zero balance and the number of Aadhaar-seeded accounts. While the website stopped publishing these two columns from April 2017, some recent ‘updates’ have removed these two columns from previous reports entirely. It is ironic that a scheme aimed at eradicating ‘financial untouchability’, has made its own data untouchable.

On 13 September 2017, while speaking at the Conclave on Financial Inclusion organised by the United Nations in India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley mentioned that zero-balance accounts under PMJDY have come down from 77% to 20% in three years – thereby claiming successful financial inclusion under the scheme.

Interestingly, data accessed by an RTI dated exactly a year back (13 September 2016) shows that out of 23.4 crore PMJDY accounts at that time in 27 public sector banks, at least 1.2 crore accounts had a balance of only Re. 1.

Several banks admitted that they had deposited small amounts (Re. 1, Rs. 2 or Rs. 5) in PMJDY accounts to reduce the number of zero-balance accounts under the scheme. However, in response to a Lok Sabha question on 25 November 2016, the government denied this by stating, “All Public-Sector Banks have denied giving any instructions to deposit Rs. 1-2 in the zero-balance accounts”.

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Newsclick.in, 18 October, 2017, https://newsclick.in/data-removed-and-data-modified-archive-reports-jan-dhan-yojana-website-undergo-changes


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