New Delhi. The country’s largest bank SBI (SBI) during April, 2017 to December, 2019, from the account holders of Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana i.e. PMJDY (Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana) in lieu of digital payment, recovered Rs. 164 crore unreasonable.
Fee has not been refunded yet. According to a report prepared by the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT Mumbai) on the Jan-Dhan account scheme, only Rs 90 crore has been returned to the account holders, even after receiving instructions from the government to refund this fee amount. Huh. An amount of Rs 164 crore is yet to be returned.
The bank had recovered Rs 254 crore in lieu of digital transactions
According to this report, SBI had collected a total of over Rs 254 crore for UPI and RuPay transactions from ordinary savings accounts opened under Jan Dhan Yojana during April, 2017 to September, 2020. In this, the bank had charged Rs 17.70 per transaction from the account holders. The country’s largest bank did not respond to the queries sent for clarification regarding this.
However, the fact remains that SBI, unlike any other bank, started levying charges for digital transactions by Jan Dhan account holders. The bank was charging Rs 17.70 per transaction for more than four withdrawals in a month. This move of SBI adversely affected the Jan-Dhan account holders doing digital transactions on the call of the government.
CBDT gave instructions to refund the fee
According to this report, this attitude of SBI was complained to the Finance Ministry in August 2020, which took immediate action. On August 30, 2020, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) issued an advisory for banks to refund the fee charged from account holders with effect from January 1, 2020. Apart from this, it was also asked not to charge any such fee in future.
Following this instruction, SBI started the process of refunding the fees charged for digital transactions from Jan-Dhan account holders on February 17, 2021. Statistics professor Ashish Das, who prepared the report, says that still Rs 164 crore is yet to be returned to these account holders.
