Girl child bank a/c policy most popular in TN

Girl child bank a/c policy most popular in TN

Chennai: Tamil Nadu has many outspoken critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration. But the state also has more accounts than any other under a flagship central scheme, Sukanya Samriddhi Accounts (SSA), data in the Lok Sabha showed on Friday.

What's more, India Post is driving the success of this scheme, with the data showing that the postal department has opened close to 98% of these accounts in the state (where its Tamil name is 'Selvamagal Semippu Thittam').

Banks across India had till June 30 opened 1.13 crore SSA accounts, with deposits totalling Rs 15,849 crore, under the programme. Tamil Nadu accounted for 14.44 lakh of these accounts, with deposits of Rs 1,962 crore.

With 10.57 lakh SSA accounts, Karnataka is in second place, and Maharashtra (9.7 lakh) is third. But Maharashtra has the maximum corpus of all states in the country, with deposits of Rs 2,142 crore.

SSA is a small savings scheme meant to secure the future of the girl child (up to 10 years old). It allows parents to deposit between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh in an account per year for a period of 14 years. The account matures in 21 years.

The Centre marketed the scheme as a way for parents to secure a fund for their daughters when they are old enough for higher education or marriage and made provisions for these accounts to be tax-free and accumulate interest at a high rate.

The Chennai city region, which includes Chennai, Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram, Vellore and Tiruvannamalai districts, with 4.81 lakh accounts, had the most depositors in the Tamil Nadu postal circle.

Postal department officials attributed the wide reach of the scheme in the state to the Tamil translation of its name, Selvamagal Semippu Thittam.

"In a state with few Hindi-speakers, we would not have been able to market the scheme with its original name," a postal official said. "Former postmaster general of Chennai, Merwin Alexander, came up with the Tamil name."