THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, November 29: Palamu district is not a bank friendly district. Its banking usage or banking landscape is insignificant. Credit deposit ratio is far below the standard norms of 60 percent.
Worse of all, 98,000 plus accounts stand frozen just because there was no transaction either by way of credit or debit in the past 10 years or so.
More than 48 crores of funds of 98,000 plus account holders lie ‘unclaimed’ in Palamu district over the last 10 years or so.
These unclaimed assets worth 48.83 crores of 98,313 depositors lying now with the RBI’s DEAF (Depositors’ Education and Awareness Fund) are of those accounts which are ‘dead’ over a period of 10 years or so, said the regional manager of the SBI in Palamu, Amiya Abhishek.
A dead account doesn’t necessarily mean the account holder is dead. The account remained inoperative for 10 years, and so it became dead by fault of no credit or debit in these 10 years.
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Jan Dhan and Inactive Accounts Highlight Awareness Gap
A senior bank official, refusing to be identified by name and bank’s name said, “Jan Dhan Yojna account came in the year 2014. It was opened with great enthusiasm. Now no one talks about it. There is a huge cash stashed there in these Jan Dhan Yojna accounts over these 10 or 11 years.”
On being asked as to how a bank account goes inoperative for as many as 10 years or so, to which the lead bank manager A Srivastav, said, “Primarily it’s because of lack of awareness among the members of the families. The families just don’t know whether there was someone’s passbook of the bank in their families also. The passbook lies cold and abandoned.”
Unclaimed assets were officially announced on Friday by a battery of senior bank officials attending a two-hour programme under the aegis of Apni Poonji, Apna Adhikar.
There are 126 branches of different banks in Palamu district.
This figure of 48.83 crores lying unclaimed for over a period of 10 years does not have the assets of the ICICI bank here, said a banker.
Unclaimed assets of Jharkhand Rajya Gramin Bank, which has more than 1,950 accounts lying cold and abandoned for over 10 years, have a bare unclaimed assets worth little over 30 lakhs, said its regional manager Arun Kumar.
A relative of a bank account holder who had come to attend this programme told this correspondent, “My uncle has left behind a couple of hundred rupees. The bank asks for his death certificate. Obtaining a death certificate is far more cumbersome than recovering a couple of hundred of rupees lying abandoned.”
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Efforts to Recover Unclaimed Assets Underway
The Union Ministry of Finance has a 3-month-long campaign beginning October to settle the unclaimed assets of 10 years or more among the eligibles.
The chief guest at the programme Md Jawed Hussain, Deputy Development Commissioner (DDC), Palamu, in his speech asked the bankers to hold customers’ relation programme even once a month as many people like him have no idea that money deposited in the bank, which remains abandoned can be recovered.
“I am honest enough to tell this gathering that I am not well-versed in digital banking. The SBI keeps changing its ‘dot com’ portal every now and then just for the reason cyber frauds outwit and outsmart safety features”, added the DDC.
He further went on to say, “Families invest. But many in the family just don’t know about such investments made. In the event of the death of such an investor, such investments lie unnoticed for years and years.”
“Days are not very far off when AI will be boosting banking by doing face authentication and other authorisation to stem chances of fraud and leakage”, opined Jawed, popular by his first name.
Challenges and Accessing Dormant Funds
A senior banker narrating his own family episode said, “My father was very critical of mutual funds. But after quite some time after his death, we found our father had a good many investments in the mutual fund. We rummaged the documents and now the retrieval of investments is underway.”
The bank officials assured hassle-free settlement of unclaimed assets with due and applicable interest during the 10-year period.
Further, the bank officials asked the woman self-help groups called in Jharkhand, ‘Didi Samuh’, to ensure their accounts remain active round the year.
Another banker said, “It will take at least a year or so to track and settle the unclaimed assets of 98,313 depositors following its inherent challenges and banks’ own preoccupation with more and more deposits all the year round.”
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Apni Punji Apna Adhikar covers not only the unclaimed assets, savings account or term deposit receipt or recurring deposit etc but insurance cover and mutual funds, also lying abandoned over 10 years or more, said the chief manager of the LIC here in Daltonganj, Niloy Mazumdar.
SBI is the lead bank in Palamu and so it has the largest number of frozen accounts which is pegged at more than 71,000 out of more than 98,000 accounts.
PNB Palamu too has a long list of frozen accounts numbering more than 15,500 accounts having a little over 7 crores of rupees lying dormant with the RBI’s DEAF.
A customer Nisha Singh told this correspondent, “Go to any bank and ask it to open a new account and the man sitting on the other side of the counter looks at you as if he wants to make you feel a liability for the bank.”
Bankers’ advice is, “Inform the bank of the death of the account holder. Produce the death certificate.”
But what is actually happening? Families are doing digital banking for individual dead already. Does anyone notice it?
