Supreme Court seeks centralised database for legal heirs

The Centre and others asked for a centralised database with information about bank accounts, insurance, post office funds, and others on Friday. A bench of justices S A Nazeer and J K Maheshwari sent notices to the Ministry of Finance, Reserve Bank of India, SEBI and others on a petition filed by journalist Sucheta Dalal.

An advocate appeared for Dalal in the apex court.

The plea sought a procedure to establish a procedure for dealing with claims of legal heirs qua bank deposits, insurance, post office funds, etc. That eliminates unnecessary litigation.

The Depositors' Education and Awareness Fund DEAF had Rs, according to it. At the end of March 2021, 25 crore was up from 33,114 crore on 31 March, 2020 and a sharp rise from Rs 18,381 crore at the end of March 2019.

The amount, which was initially started at Rs 400 crore in 1999, was 10 times higher at Rs 4,100 crore at the end of March 2020, the plea said.

The petition stated that there is an urgent need to have a centralised online database under the control of RBI that will provide information about the deceased account holder, including such details as the name, address and last date of transaction by the deceased account holder.

It should be mandatory for banks to inform RBI about the inoperative or dormant bank accounts. This exercise should be repeated after an interval of 9 -- 12 months.

The plea said that the need for a centralised database of information of deceased account holders is extremely important when considering the already time-consuming and cumbersome process that legal heirs have to go through while making claims after the death of an individual.

The plea sought to ensure that unclaimed funds of the public are transferred to government owned funds viz. The Depositor's Education and Awareness Fund, on grounds that the same were not claimed by legal heirs nominees, is made available to said legal heirs nominees by providing information of holders of inoperative dormant accounts on a centralised online database.