Every fourth Jan Dhan account is inoperative; 5.72 crore hold zero balance

One in four accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is classified as inoperative, and 5.72 crore accounts held a zero balance, according to an RTI reply dated 1 September from the Department of Financial Services. Activist Chandra Shekhar Gaur filed the request. PTI reported the numbers on 6 September.

As of 12 August 2026 the department counted 59,03,74,907 PMJDY accounts with a combined balance of Rs 3,15,179.90 crore. Of those accounts, 32.89 crore were held by women, including transgender holders, and 26.14 crore by men. Zero-balance accounts numbered 5,72,35,490. Inoperative accounts numbered 15,36,77,009, which is 26 percent of the book.

Uttar Pradesh led every large column. It had 10.51 crore PMJDY accounts, 95.92 lakh zero-balance accounts and 3.23 crore inoperative accounts. Bihar was second in total accounts at 7.01 crore and second in zero-balance accounts at 62.35 lakh. West Bengal, Assam and Maharashtra followed on the zero-balance list. The five states with the most inoperative accounts were Uttar Pradesh, Bihar (1.59 crore), Madhya Pradesh (1.35 crore), West Bengal (1.02 crore) and Maharashtra (97.94 lakh). West Bengal had 5.73 crore accounts in all, Rajasthan 3.87 crore and Maharashtra 3.85 crore.

The Centre told Gaur it does not keep a gender split of balances, zero-balance accounts or inoperative accounts at the national level. That means the 32.89 crore women-held accounts cannot be matched, from this reply, to the 5.72 crore empty ones.

PMJDY began in August 2014 as the National Mission for Financial Inclusion. The design was a no-frills account, a RuPay card, overdraft after a clean history, and a pipe for direct benefit transfers. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has used the 58-crore-plus stock as proof that welfare now hits a bank account rather than a middleman. The RTI does not contradict the stock. It shows how much of the stock is idle.

An inoperative account, in banking practice, is one with no customer-induced transaction for a set period, often two years. Zero balance can mean the holder never funded it, or that a DBT credit was withdrawn to the last rupee. Both states of the account still count in the 59 crore headline. They do not count as working inclusion in the same way.

Uttar Pradesh's 3.23 crore inoperative accounts are about 31 percent of that state's PMJDY book. Bihar's 1.59 crore are about 23 percent of its book. Those ratios will matter the next time a state wants to push a new cash transfer through Jan Dhan. Credits into an inoperative account can bounce into a suspense pool or sit unseen if the mobile number on the file is dead.

The useful next figure, which this RTI does not give, is how many of the 15.37 crore inoperative accounts still receive a government credit, and how many of the 5.72 crore empty accounts received one in the past year and were then drawn down. Without that split, the debate will stay where it is: one side citing 59 crore and Rs 3.15 lakh crore, the other citing one account in four that no longer moves.