Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana Has 59.59 Crore Bank Accounts Holding Rs 3.24 Lakh Crore, and About 56 Per Cent of Them Belong to Women

Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), the national mission to give every adult a basic bank account, counted 59.59 crore accounts and Rs 3,24,069.14 crore in deposits on 14 October 2026, according to the progress report on the Department of Financial Services (DFS) website. Of those accounts, 33.23 crore are held by women, about 56 per cent.

The scheme was announced in the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech on 15 August 2014 and launched on 28 August 2014, as the Press Information Bureau (PIB) records in its releases on the scheme’s anniversaries. The numbers below carry their dates because the DFS page and the PIB releases are cut on different days and differ slightly.

A record 18,096,130 accounts in one week

A Guinness World Records certificate, displayed on the DFS website, reads that the “most bank accounts opened in 1 week as a part of financial inclusion campaign” is 18,096,130, achieved by the Department of Financial Services between 23 and 29 August 2014. That is 1.81 crore accounts. Business Today and Governance Now both reported the citation, and Governance Now added that 11.5 crore accounts had been opened in under five months.

Business Today gave the original target as 7.5 crore accounts by 26 January 2015, later raised to 10 crore. PIB’s 2022 anniversary release puts the count at 14.72 crore in March 2015 and 17.90 crore by the end of the first year.

The same release says that one in two accounts opened between March 2014 and March 2020 was a PMJDY account.

What 59.59 crore accounts hold

The DFS progress report splits the 59.59 crore accounts by type of bank. Public sector banks hold 45.84 crore of them with deposits of Rs 2,52,492.89 crore. Regional rural banks hold 11.18 crore accounts and Rs 61,311.23 crore. Private sector banks hold 2.38 crore accounts and rural cooperative banks 0.19 crore. The page notes that its information “is based upon the data as submitted by different banks”.

Dividing deposits by accounts gives an average balance of about Rs 5,438 (a tuput calculation). PIB’s 27 August 2026 release, with figures as on 19 August 2026, states 59.09 crore accounts, deposits of Rs 3,16,514 crore and an average of Rs 5,356 per account. In August 2022 the same ministry reported 46.25 crore accounts, Rs 1,73,954 crore and an average of Rs 3,761.

An account comes with no minimum balance requirement, interest on the deposit, a RuPay debit card with accident insurance of Rs 2 lakh for accounts opened after 28 August 2018, and an overdraft of up to Rs 10,000 for eligible holders, according to the DFS scheme page. The accounts also qualify for the Jeevan Jyoti and Suraksha insurance schemes, the Atal Pension Yojana and Mudra loans.

Women, villages and RuPay cards

The DFS report shows 46.27 crore accounts at rural and semi-urban bank branches and 13.32 crore at urban and metro branches. PIB’s August 2026 release states the rural and semi-urban share as 77.8 per cent (45.95 crore accounts) and the women’s share as 55.7 per cent (32.92 crore). Its August 2022 release gave the women’s share as 55.59 per cent.

RuPay is the domestic card network run by the National Payments Corporation of India. The DFS report counts 41.79 crore RuPay debit cards issued to account holders, with public sector banks accounting for 35.68 crore. PIB’s August 2026 release gave 41.29 crore, and its August 2022 release 31.94 crore. By the DFS figures, that is about 70 cards for every 100 accounts (a tuput calculation).

Benefit transfers through the accounts

The ministry describes Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile numbers together as the JAM trinity, the channel through which welfare money reaches a beneficiary’s account without a middleman. In the 2022 release it said that within ten days of the nationwide Covid lockdown, about 20 crore women’s Jan Dhan accounts were credited with ex-gratia payments. It also cited banks as saying that about 5.4 crore Jan Dhan holders receive Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) payments under various schemes.

The DBT Mission portal shows a cumulative total of Rs 54,00,105 crore (about Rs 54 lakh crore) on its homepage, as viewed on 23 October 2026. The portal does not print a start date next to that figure, though its year-by-year series begins in 2013-14. It reports Rs 6,89,708 crore transferred in 2024-25 and Rs 7,51,902 crore across 801 crore transactions in 2025-26. The homepage figures are not split by type of account.

The portal also publishes the government’s estimate of savings. Under the heading “Estimated Benefits/ Gains from DBT and Other Governance Reforms”, it lists Rs 5,14,201.92 crore up to March 2025. The largest line is the public distribution system at Rs 3,12,977.81 crore, linked to the deletion of 6.36 crore duplicate or non-existent ration cards. The portal credits the gains to DBT and other governance reforms together, so the figure is the government’s estimate for a package, not for Jan Dhan alone.

Our piece on UPI covers the payment system that runs on top of this account base.

What the World Bank survey found

The World Bank’s Global Findex survey asks a sample of adults whether they have an account at a bank, another financial institution or a mobile-money provider. For India, the World Bank’s open data series gives these shares of adults aged 15 and above: 35 per cent in 2011, 53 per cent in 2014, 80 per cent in 2017, 78 per cent in 2021 and 89 per cent in 2024.

Women’s ownership rose from 26 per cent in 2011 to 89 per cent in 2024, and men’s from 44 per cent to 89 per cent, by the same series. Among the poorest 40 per cent of adults the share went from 27 per cent to 86 per cent.

The survey counts every kind of account, so it does not measure Jan Dhan on its own. The World Bank’s 2021 India brief says much of the growth came between 2014 and 2017 “as a result of a government program that began in 2014” which gave unbanked adults an account using an official identification document. It also found that two-thirds of Indian account owners opened their first account to receive a government payment or a wage payment. The brief describes the 2021 share, 78 per cent, as relatively unchanged from 2017 and notes that India had no gender gap in account ownership that year.

Zero balances and inactive accounts

Not every account is in use. The ministry’s August 2022 release said 8.2 per cent of PMJDY accounts were zero-balance and that 37.57 crore of 46.25 crore (81.2 per cent) were operative. It defined an inoperative account, under Reserve Bank of India guidelines, as one with no customer-initiated transaction for more than two years. The Reserve Bank is the regulator that sets that rule.

The Department of Financial Services answered an RTI application on 1 September 2026, in figures dated 12 August 2026, as the Tribune reported. It counted 59.04 crore accounts, of which 5.72 crore (about 9.7 per cent, a tuput calculation) had zero balance and 15.37 crore (about 26 per cent) were inoperative. In December 2025, Outlook India reported the government telling Parliament that 15.07 crore of 56.98 crore accounts were inoperative as of 12 November 2025.

The Findex survey measures inactivity differently. Its 2021 India brief puts the share of inactive accounts at 35 per cent, meaning no deposits, withdrawals or digital payments in the year before the survey. That is a survey of all account holders and is not comparable with the ministry’s two-year rule.

The rural and semi-urban share also differs between releases. The ministry gave 66.79 per cent in August 2022 and 66.7 per cent (37.48 crore accounts) in August 2025, and 77.8 per cent in August 2026. The 2026 release does not say why the share rose.

On 8 July 2025 the Department of Financial Services said it had not asked banks to close inactive Jan Dhan accounts, and described a three-month campaign from 1 July with re-KYC (a fresh identity check) of due accounts. By 28 August 2025, PIB reported, banks had held 1,77,102 camps under it.