Every fourth Jan Dhan account sits unused, RTI shows 15.37 crore inoperative

One in four accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana is classified as inoperative, according to a 1 September reply from the Department of Financial Services. The same file shows 5.72 crore accounts with a zero balance. The scheme still holds 59,03,74,907 accounts and Rs 3,15,179.90 crore in deposits as of 12 August 2026.

Activist Chandra Shekhar Gaur filed the RTI. The department said 32.89 crore accounts belong to women, a figure that includes transgender holders in the official count, and 26.14 crore belong to men. It does not keep a gender split for balances, zero-balance accounts or inoperative accounts at the Centre.

Inoperative accounts numbered 15,36,77,009. That is 26 percent of the book, close to the "every fourth account" line used in the first reports. Zero-balance accounts numbered 5,72,35,490, or about 9.7 percent.

Uttar Pradesh at the top of every column

Uttar Pradesh has 10.51 crore PMJDY accounts, the most of any state. It also has the most zero-balance accounts at 95.92 lakh and the most inoperative accounts at 3.23 crore. Bihar is second on total accounts with 7.01 crore and second on both idle lists: 62.35 lakh zero-balance and 1.59 crore inoperative. West Bengal has 5.73 crore accounts, 37.20 lakh with no money and 1.02 crore inoperative.

Assam appears high on the zero-balance list at 36.30 lakh. Maharashtra has 3.85 crore accounts, 36.04 lakh with zero balance and 97.94 lakh inoperative. Madhya Pradesh does not lead on openings but sits third on the inoperative table at 1.35 crore. Rajasthan has 3.87 crore accounts.

The average balance across all accounts is about Rs 5,338. That average hides the 5.72 crore empty accounts and the heavy deposits in accounts used for wages, pensions and DBT credits.

What "inoperative" actually means

Banks mark an account inoperative after a long stretch with no customer-initiated transaction. Government credits can still land in such an account, which is why a frozen Jan Dhan ledger is not the same as a closed one. The political claim for PMJDY, launched in August 2014, has always been the raw count of accounts. The RTI file is useful because it separates that count into accounts that move and accounts that do not.

A 26 percent idle rate after twelve years is not a small leak. It is large enough to affect how officials should read any future claim about "universal" inclusion. Women still hold the majority of accounts. The Centre cannot say from this file whether they also hold the majority of the Rs 3.15 lakh crore, because it does not store that split.

The next useful request is at the state level: how many of the 3.23 crore inoperative accounts in Uttar Pradesh received a DBT credit in the past year, and how many have had no credit and no debit at all. Until that cut exists, the national average will keep flattering the live accounts and hiding the dead ones.