Demonetisation: No major fall seen in zero balance accounts' in Telangana

Hyderabad: Deposits in Jan Dhan accounts in Telangana have swelled after the note ban, but there has not been a great decrease in the ‘zero balance accounts’ as anticipated earlier. After the reports of the rich using the poor’s Jan Dhan accounts to convert their black money into the new notes, the Union finance ministry has asked banks to track these accounts for unusual fund inflows.

The banks, however, found that deposits in these accounts in the state have grown from Rs 940 crore to Rs 1,570 crore since the note ban. However, the zero balance accounts came down from 23.65 lakh to 23.31 lakh. Jan Dhan scheme has two types of accounts — one with some balance in account and the other without any money.

According to officials, the drop in zero balance could have happened also because some of these accounts become non-operational after being inactive for two years. “The latest statistics reveal that there was not much of an abnormal rise in deposits or decrease in zero balance accounts as was anticipated. Since people had no option but to deposit their old notes in banks after demonetisation, there was a sudden increase in deposits in the first two weeks, which has now come down significantly,” said finance minister Etela Rajender.