Data from the Reserve Bank of India has shown that Rs. 11,302 Crore belonging to three Crore account holders is present with 64 banks unclaimed. The largest amount of Rs. 1262 Crore is present with the State Bank of India and Rs. 1250 Crore with Punjab National Bank. All the other nationalized banks have Rs. 7040 Crore stored with them. However, all this money is a fraction of all the deposits of more than Rs. 100 Lakh Crore handled by the Indian banks. The former chair professor of RBI, Charan Singh stated that most of the deposits lying with the banks are cases of those deceased or people having multiple bank accounts.
He also said that it was unlikely that the amount was benami or unaccounted money. Under the section 26 of Banking Regulation Act of 1949, the banks have to submit a return of all the accounts in India which have been operated for 10 years within 30 days to the RBI after the closing of each calendar year. However, according to Section 26A, any depositor or claimant will not be prevented from claiming the deposit or operating the account after the expiry of 10 years making the banking company liable to repay the entire amount.
Depositor Education and Awareness Fund which was created as per the provisions of the Banking Laws Ac, 2012 contains all the money which was lying around in the dormant bank accounts. RBI says that seven private banks including DCB, IndusInd, YES Bank, Kotak Mahindra, DCB, Axis, and HDFC have Rs. 824 Crore as unclaimed deposits. Twelve other private banks together have deposits amounting to Rs. 592 Crore taking the total money with private banks to Rs. 1416 Crore. Out of all these private banks, Rs. 476 Crore is present with ICICI Bank followed by Kotak Mahindra Bank which has Rs. 151 Crore. 25 foreign banks with smaller operations have Rs. 332 Crore in unclaimed deposits with HSBC accounting Rs. 105 Crore.