Jaipur NGO to carry out campaign on unclaimed bank deposits

A Jaipur-based NGO has been selected to conduct workshops on depositors' education in Jaipur, Kota, Udaipur, Ajmer, Chittorgarh, Bhilwara and Jodhpur in Rajasthan.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has launched the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund (DEAF) Scheme 2014 to utilise unclaimed funds to promote interests of depositors, said the NGO CUTS' director, George Cherriyan.
As per information provided in Parliament in December 2013, Rs 3,652 crore of unclaimed deposits were lying in Indian banks. Of this, Rs 340 crore was deposited with private banks and Rs 75 crore with foreign banks, he added.
RBI has also constituted a committee to manage the fund in accordance with the scheme.

The fund would be utilised to promote depositors' interests and for such other purposes as may be specified by RBI, said CUTS senior programme coordinator Deepak Saxena.
RBI had invited applications from NGOs to carry out awareness programmes, Saxena said, adding that in the first leg, 20 NGOs registered themselves with RBI and CUTS was selected for Rajasthan.
The programme was launched and the first workshop held in Jaipur on June 7, Saxena said, adding that Banking Ombudsman Madhavi Sharma, GM, Banking Supervision, RBI PK Pradhan and AGM Deepak Gogia took part in it among others.
RBI's new guidelines advise banks to display the list of unclaimed bank deposits/inoperative accounts inactive/inoperative for 10 years on their websites, said Saxena, adding that the list must only contain names and addresses of account holders but not account numbers and bank branch details.