Eyeing the 2019 Parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to help women voters through the Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY), one of his pet projects. According to sources, the initial plan is to provide health care and insurance schemes to women holding Jan Dhan accounts.
The JDY was the first big mission launched by the Modi government after it assumed office in May 2014. The scheme aims to provide at least one bank account for every household, along with an overdraft facility of Rs 5,000 after the initial six months, a RuPay debit card and a personal accident insurance of Rs 1 lakh.
An official source in the Ministry of Finance said: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to make his most popular social scheme, the Jan Dhan Yojana, a vehicle for women empowerment’s in the country. In this regard, the Ministry of Finance had set up a committee to work on the data gathering process of gender-based account holders, through which the government can directly reach women with its targeted social security schemes.”
“The committee was also tasked to come up with region-based data of JDY account holders so that specially designed social security schemes could be launched in every district. The data of these account holders could be useful in launching specific health schemes and it will also help in monitoring of these schemes,” the same source cited above said. “At present, under the JDY scheme, account holders are eligible to get an insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh, but the Centre is planning to come up with targeted health security schemes, especially for women account holders. The announcement is likely to be made in next month’s Budget Session,” he added.