NEW DELHI: The “Depositor Education and Awareness Fund Scheme, 2014”, was notified by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which covers norms related to unclaimed deposits and outlines details of utilisation of funds including, inter alia, promotion of depositors’ interests and other purposes as may be specified by the RBI. This was stated by Union Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Kisanrao Karad in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

The Minister stated that as a result of various steps undertaken to return the unclaimed deposits to their rightful owners/claimants, a total ₹5,729 crore has been transferred from “Depositor Education and Awareness” (DEA) Fund to banks towards refund of settling unclaimed deposits, in last five years.

Further, the Minister stated, RBI has announced to set up a Centralised Web portal for the public to search unclaimed deposits across multiple banks.

RBI has also launched a campaign “100 Days 100 Pays” for banks to trace and settle top 100 unclaimed deposits of every bank in every district of the country within 100 days, commencing from 1.6.2023 to 8.9.2023, the Minister stated.