Hyderabad, The Telangana Grameena Bank (TGB) has recalled Rs 16 crore from over three lakh accounts after the amount was wrongly credited under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) in view of the ongoing lockdown.

Bank officials on Wednesday said almost the entire amount was recovered from these accounts.

Under PMGKY, Rs 500 cash was to be transferred in each of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) accounts held by poor women.

The Centre had announced that every beneficiary will get Rs 500 each for three months. The first installment was released in the first week of April.

TGB credited the cash in about nine lakh PMJDY accounts early this month. However, it later found that over three lakh accounts were opened before the launch of PMJDY in August 2014 and hence, ineligible under the scheme.

Officials said the confusion was because even these three lakh accounts were converted into PMJDY accounts as per a decision of the Department of Financial Services to categorize all basic bank accounts as PMJDY accounts.

However, only those women who had opened PMJYD accounts after the launch of the scheme were eligible for direct cash benefit transfer under Covid-19 relief package.

Officials said barring about Rs 18 lakh, the entire amount was recovered. They claimed that there is no problem in recovering the remaining amount as the accounts in which cash was credited are all active accounts.

Established under the Regional Rural Bank Act 1976 as a government scheduled bank, TGB had 421 branches in 18 districts of Telangana.

The shareholders of the bank are the the Centre, the State Bank of India and the Telangana government in the ratio of 50:35:15 per cent respectively.