The nitty-gritty of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent announcement to provide life cover of ₹ 30,000 for each of the beneficiaries of Jan Dhan Yojana will be discussed on Monday.

For this purpose, the Department of Financial Services in the Finance Ministry has convened a meeting with representatives of Indian Banks’ Association (IBA), Life Insurance Corporation and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on that day, official sources said.

It is expected that the meeting would see discussions around the costs involved for providing such facility and also decide which institution would be required to bear the premium cost for such life insurance cover.

Indications are that LIC will be asked to provide the life cover with possibly an assurance from the Government that the corporation would be reimbursed in due course for the costs incurred.

NPCI—which agreed to bear the premium costs for the accident insurance cover of ₹ 1 lakh-- had recently indicated that it was not in a position to bear the costs for providing a life insurance cover.

Till Saturday afternoon, the Jan Dhan Yojana—flagship programme of the BJP Government—had seen enrolments to the tune of 2.14 crore accounts.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said that banks will not bear the cost of the Jan Dhan Yojana and that an entirely different financial mechanism was put in place for the programme.

On August 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set stiffer targets for the 'Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana' programme by advancing the timeline for achieving financial inclusion of 7.5 crore unbanked families.

Instead of August 15, 2015, the basic bank accounts for these 7.5 crore families have to be opened by January 26 next year, the Prime Minister had said.

srivats.kr@thehindu.co.in

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