New Delhi: Banks have as much as Rs 3,652 crore of unclaimed deposits lying with them, with the State Bank of India alone accounting for about 15 per cent of the amount, the government informed Parlia-ment on Friday.
“The total amount of unclaimed deposits (more than 10 years old) lying with all scheduled commercial banks at the end of December 2012 is over Rs 3,652.64 crore,” finance minister P. Chidambaram said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
He said banks are required to submit a return to the Reserve Bank within 30 days of the close of the calendar year for all accounts that have not been operated for 10 years.
Total unclaimed deposits in public sector banks stood at Rs 3,237 crore, while for private sector and foreign lenders they were Rs 340 crore and Rs 75 crore, respectively. SBI, the country’s largest bank, had Rs 539 crore of total unclaimed deposits.
In 2012, the Central government had proposed to transfer this amount into Depositor Education and Awareness Fund to be used for promotion of the depositors’ interest and other purposes as may be specified by the RBI from time to time, but there was a lot of opposition to the plan and it was put on hold.
The unclaimed accounts include fixed deposits worth Rs 287 crore with public sector banks and Rs 48 crore with private banks.
The RBI has directed all banks to proactively try to find out the legal heirs of the depositors and transfer the money to them.
The SBI group, which includes five associate banks, had unclaimed deposits of Rs 714 crore. Canara Bank had unclaimed funds of Rs 526 crore, followed by Union Bank of India (Rs 390 crore) and PNB (Rs 385 crore).
Among private sector players, ICICI Bank had unclaimed deposits of Rs 101 crore while HDFC Bank had Rs 13 crore. Among top private banks, Axis Bank has lowest unclaimed deposits at Rs 1.21 crore
