All Villagers To Get Bank Accounts By Jan 10

As per reports, the Telangana government today set for itself a deadline of January 10, for opening bank accounts and capturing biometric features of all people in residing in the villages of Telangana, in order to completely disburse social security pensions to them.

Panchayat Raj Minister Jupally Krishna Rao told a media conference after a meeting with the State-level Bankers Committee held to discuss measures to improve pension disbursal on Wednesday, that there were about 4.5 lakh poor people who did not possess bank accounts or Aadhaar cards. Opening bank accounts and installing swiping machines in all gram panchayats by January 10 was therefore incumbent on the State government. Banks and post offices were also persuaded to issue RuPay debit cards to all pensioners to make the transition smooth.

It was pointed out in the committee meeting that there were no SBH branches in nearly 5,000 gram panchayats, Rao said. Upon reviewing this, he urged banks to open up branches in all 5,000 villages.

Rao also said that 39 lakh persons got social security pensions in the State, most of them from banks and post offices, which resulted in a delay of about a week in completing the payments. Therefore, the government decided to take up "Aadhaar seeding" and obtain biometric details of all pensioners in all rural areas by December 31 to speed up payments, he said.