Centre widens scope for Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

The government on Thursday said it had approved the indefinite continuation of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) while doubling the accident insurance and relaxing the age criteria by five years to further incentivize the scheme.

The decision was taken by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday, an official statement said.

The government's official spokesperson had on Wednesday said that the extension and respective changes were made to the Atal Pension Yojana. However, it clarified on Thursday that it was, in fact, the National Mission for Financial Inclusion - Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.

"Correction...The tweets mistakenly refer to Atal Pension Yojana. The facts instead pertain to Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. We regret the error," the Press Information Bureau said.

In its new avatar, the Jan Dhan Yojana will now have a relaxed age limit of 18-65 years for availing overdraft facility as against the earlier 60 years upper limit.

It will have an overdraft limit of Rs 10,000, against the earlier Rs 5,000. Also, there will not be any conditions attached for overdraft up to Rs 2,000, the statement said.

"Under the expanded coverage from 'every household to every adult', accidental insurance cover for new RuPay cardholders will be raised from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh to new PMJDY accounts opened after August 28," it said.

The government said that so far, around 32.41 crore Jan Dhan accounts have been opened with more than Rs 81,200 crore of deposit balance.

Out of those, 53 percent account holders are women and 59 percent are in rural and semi-urban areas and more than 83 percent operative accounts (except states of Assam, Meghalaya, J&K) are Aadhaar seeded, with the issuance of approximately 24.4 crore RuPay cards to these account holders, it said.