File photo of Congress leader Digvijaya Singh
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh today accused the Narendra Modi-led government of cooking up the Prime Minister Jandhan Yojana (PMJY) enrollment figures.
"Is it possible? The banks were given this task two days before and in a country like ours, is it possible to open 1.5 crore accounts? In the next parliament session, I am going to ask the government to provide me the dates on which all the accounts were opened," Mr Singh told NDTV.
On August 27, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet colleagues had launched the PMJY scheme as one of their flagship events to promote financial inclusion and bring everyone under the banking system. And the government had fixed a target of creating 1.5 crore bank accounts simultaneously on a single day.
He also charged that the NDA government has merely rehashed a 2012 UPA plan of providing financial inclusion to the poor.
"What he has done is that he has renamed the schemes of the UPA government. Dr Manmohan Singh had announced it in 2012. What he has done is that he just marketed them in a different brand," said Mr Singh.
"These bank accounts are mostly those that were mostly opened before the NDA government came in. Nearly 45,000 of these accounts were opened by the Gehlot government when his government used to transfer pension money to the beneficiaries," he added.
The Congress leader said though the figure of 1.5 crore bank accounts may be genuine, they also include accounts opened during the UPA regime.