The share of inoperative accounts under the Union government’s flagship financial inclusion scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), has seen a notable rise over the past year, indicating a slowdown in account activity.

According to a report by Business Standard, citing a senior government official, the proportion of dormant accounts in public-sector banks (PSBs) has gone up from 21% last year to 26% as of the end of September.

“As of September 2025, of a total of 554.5 million PMJDY accounts in PSBs, around 142.8 million were inoperative. For 2025-26, the target for opening new PMJDY accounts in PSBs is 38 million, of which 13.2 million had been opened till September,” the official told the newspaper.

The report highlighted that among the major public-sector banks, Bank of India (32%) and Union Bank of India (33%) recorded the highest share of inoperative accounts, while Punjab & Sind Bank (8%) had the lowest. The inoperative ratio for Bank of India alone rose from 19% in September 2024 to 25% a year later.

An email query sent by the newspaper to the finance ministry remained unanswered at the time of publication.

As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, a savings account is treated as inoperative or dormant when there are no customer-initiated transactions for over two years.

Earlier this year, Business Standard had reported that public-sector banks closed around 1.5 million inoperative zero-balance PMJDY accounts in April as a one-time measure to weed out duplicate and non-functional accounts.

Launched in August 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the PMJDY aims to provide universal access to banking and financial services, including savings and deposit accounts, remittance, credit, insurance, and pension facilities at an affordable cost.

According to RBI data, nearly 55.5 million PMJDY accounts with balances worth Rs 75,315 million are currently dormant, while about 480 million RuPay cards are yet to be received by account holders.