Jan Dhan Yojana offers Life Insurance Cover

Recently introduced by the Government, this is a plan for the masses and comes with many riders. It has to be noted though that not every individual with a Jan Dhan account is eligible for life insurance.

As far as qualifying factors for joining this plan go, the life insurance cover of Rs 30,000 is applicable for only heads of families and any earning family members of ages 18 to 59 years. In its present form, this insurance cover is valid only up to fiscal 2019-20, subject to review thereafter. Another important condition of this plan requires mandatory exit of beneficiaries from the life insurance scheme on completion of 60 years of age.

Also, this life insurance benefit is being offered to individuals who are opening first-time bank accounts (anyday between 15 August 2014 and 26 January 2015) and are getting their accounts linked to a biometric card and a valid RuPay card.

The following categories have been excluded from this plan:

• People with taxable income or those with TDS deductions
• Employees of state and central governments
• Individuals already in Aam Aadmi Bima Yojana and their families

In addition to these, any participant in this plan is not allowed to buy or hold life-cover from any other bank.

Under this plan, PM Modi, on 28 August 2014, also launched a plan for opening bank accounts for any two people from every Indian family. The scheme also offers accidental insurance cover of Rs. 1 lakh, a RuPay debit card and overdraft facility.

In its present form, the plan aims to cover 7.5 crore families, and a total of Rs 7,006 crores with 9.04 new bank accounts have been notified. The accompanying life insurance cover is offered by Life Insurance Corporation of India through the Social Security Fund with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore.